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When released, critics gave Beautiful Girls good reviews. It averages 78% on Rotten Tomatoes, but there is a sharp decline to 64% when looking at Top Critics. Like me, critics enjoyed the connection between the scene-stealing Hutton and Portman. Others commented on the film’s grounded approach. Well, maybe the world was different in 1996, but none of these characters seem real to me. Almost every dialogue exchange was there to serve the plot, but without any depth. Each scene relies on coincidence and nothing is ever surprising. A movie needs some scenes of sustenance to make you care about a career and learn about their true motives. Movies that are all plot are pretty boring since there is no one to connect with. Of course, there have been countless films that are worse (The Last Kiss, Valentine’s Day), but there have also been countless films on the same level (He’s Just Not That Into You, The Family Stone) and countless films that are better (Love Actually). With that, and for its repetitive ways, Beautiful Girls is Not With Us.

Beautiful Girls was set as a Valentine’s Day pic on the weekend of February 9, 1996. Released by Miramax in 752 theaters (low overall, but high for the indie release company), it opened in seventh with $2.8 million. Falling out of the top ten the subsequent week, it wound up with $10.6 million ($19 million adjusted) as it quickly vanished from theaters. However, when compared to the unpopular-at-the-box-office genre of meandering almost-adults finding themselves, it fared decently.

Fourteen years later, Beautiful Girls has fallen into film obscurity. The only DVD release of the film is still its barebones initial debut on the format back in April of 1999. Scott Rosenberg, who based many of the characters on people he knew in real life, did an odd spinoff of the movie in the form the TV show October Road. The show is about an author who returns home to face the people his book is based upon. Picked up by ABC, the show was quickly cancelled after a mere 19 episodes.

I admire the movie’s attempt at making what could have been an interesting point about relationships and stereotypes, but no one seemed up to the challenge of executing. All that we get instead is seeing a group of friends drinking. Meager conflicts without depth do not make up a movie and the lackadaisical characters drifting through life do not help. We got a conclusion, but the film ends too quickly to see if there is an actual change in the characters or if they will fall back into their same old routines. Thurman and Sorvino sure might be Beautiful Girls, but here like everyone else, they are just static.

Verdict: Not With Us

5 out of 10

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