Romy and Michele's High School Reunion | 
| Director: David Mirkin
Actors: Mira Sorvino, Lisa Kudrow, Janeane Garofalo, Alan Cumming, Julia Campbell
Studio: Walt Disney Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.99
Buy New: $5.25
You Save: $9.74 (65%)
New (43) Used (14) from $5.25
Rating:  190 reviews
Sales Rank: 2355
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd, Letterboxed, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 92 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 4.8 x 0.6
MPN: DISD17378D
ISBN: 0788816799
UPC: 071795100282
EAN: 9786305428428
ASIN: 6305428425
Theatrical Release Date: April 25, 1997
Release Date: August 24, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Big laughs and hot stars make this a can't-miss comedy in the hilarious tradition of CLUELESS and DUMB AND DUMBER! Romy (Academy Award?-winner Mira Sorvino) and Michele (Emmy Award-winner Lisa Kudrow) are carefree party girls who reinvent themselves for their 10-year high school reunion. With new wardrobes and wild stories of success, they make a big impression ... until a former classmate Janeane Garofalo -- DOGMA) blabs their real story to everyone! But that's when Romy and Michele let loose with a surprise of their own ... and outrageous results! Featuring a sizzling hit soundtrack of favorite hits from the '80s, it's the comedy treat The New York Times calls cheerful, giddy fun!
Amazon.com
Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino play ditzy best friends who decide to attend their 10-year high school reunion, but they completely make over their styles and identities first in order to impress the people who tormented them. The two stars keep the film going despite various lapses and potholes in David Mirkin's direction and despite a sneaking sense that the idea can't sustain the length of an entire feature. A midsection dream sequence underscores the latter problem through blatant padding, but Sorvino and Kudrow--both of whom became established stars playing airheads on other projects--are worth the weaknesses. --Tom Keogh
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| Customer Reviews: Read 185 more reviews...
 I'm the Mary, and you're the Rhoda June 12, 2009
C. CRADDOCK (Bakersfield)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Romy White (Mira Sorvino) and Michele Weinberger (Lisa Kudrow) have been friends since they met at Sagebrush High in Tucson. Since then they both moved to Los Angeles, and they live together, but other than getting out of Tucson they are what might be described as under achievers. Michele is unemployed and Romy works as a cashier in the service department of a Jaguar dealership. They do, however, have flair, style, and share a unique fashion sense.
At the Jaguar dealership Romy recognizes Heather Mooney (Janeanne Garofalo), another Sagebrush alumna, in line. Heather is obviously doing well if she can afford a Jag. She has no time for old High School chums, and barely conceals her disdain, until Heather hears that Romy is still friends with Michele, and it is revealed that Heather had a crush on Sandy Frink (Alan Cumming), who totaled ignored Heather because of his infatuation with Michele.
Michele, for her part, was indifferent to Sandy's affection, because Sandy was kind of a dork. They called him the Frink-a-zoid, and isn't that always the way it is with these love triangles, or perhaps it was a trapezoid or even a rhomboid, or some other kind of oblique-angled parallelogram with unequal adjacent sides
The 10-Year High School Reunion looms on the horizon and the die is cast. Though Heather claims she wouldn't be caught dead there, they all have a date with destiny.
Romy and Michele want to lose weight, get good jobs, and good boyfriends. When two weeks proves to be too short a time to meet their objectives, they go to Plan B: Claim to be the inventors of Post-Its, and therefore rich and successful. That plan doesn't really work out, either, but at least we get a good comedy romp where scores are settled, lessons are learned, and a good time is had by most.
Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow create quite the whacky kooks. Though Sorvino won an Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite, she doesn't have to resort to quite such a cartoonish voice for her Romy. Though Sorvino is certainly talented, I always thought that Oscar she won for Aphrodite was kind of a My Cousin Vinnyish fluke. If I could hand out Oscars, she'd get one for this movie instead. The part where she tells off the queen bee of the "A" group alone could qualify her for one.
Romy and Michele are bottle blonde bimbos, but their dark roots are showing. Lisa Kudrow received a degree in Biology from Vassar College, and Mira Sorvino a degree in Asian Studies from Harvard University, so during production of Romy and Michele, they nicknamed each other "Smart" and "Smarter".
An excellent counterbalance to their blonde humor is the dark and bitter Janeanne Garofalo. She makes those withering remarks that you wish you would've thought of back when you were being tormented in High School. She is a tough cookie, but then she has that vulnerable side. She can take the most polite and pedestrian prose, but through her brilliant delivery you sense the subtle malice seething underneath that thin veneer.
Alan Cumming made a great dork, and though he was kind of a deus ex machina, plot wise, he does get to finally dance with his beloved Michele, though only if Romy can dance with her, so it is still a triangle, albeit an isosceles triangle with the two equal sides of Romy and Michele. It is an interesting twist on the whole dance at the prom or reunion scene, and is set to the lovely 80's ballad "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper. The title fits in well with the whole reunion theme, too.
Director David Mirkin does a great job for someone who has mostly worked in television. He keeps the jokes and pop culture references flowing -- Mary Tyler Moore Show, Pretty Woman, Footloose -- he has the boys in the Jaguar Service Department watching The Simpsons, and as an inside joke, it is one that he directed. Though he worked mostly in television, it was good television. Besides The Simpsons, there was the brilliant but short lived Chris Elliot vehicle Get a Life, Newhart, and The Larry Sanders Show. Mirkin did a great job directing this film, and even his name is funny.
Although I told myself I was looking merely for a soothing presence, a glorified pot-au-feu, an animated merkin, I settled for "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion." Ah, the High School Reunion Genre, it must have been something in the zeitgeist of 1997, because that year also saw the release of "Grosse Pointe Blank," also featuring a 10-Year High School Reunion; only this one had a better selection of music, and the protagonist, Martin Q. Blank, was a professional hit man, so his problem was what to tell people he did for a living since graduating.
The shot gun marriage of action movie with High School Reunion comedy that was "Grosse Pointe Blank" didn't work nearly as well as R&M'sHSR, but Romy and Michele also had trouble telling people what they did for a living, since Romy was a cashier, and Michele was unemployed. Not very impressive.
Though Romy and Michele were not very impressive, "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion" was very impressive. Very impressive, indeed.
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Michele: Hey Romy, remember Mrs. Divitz's class, there was like always a word problem. Like, there's a guy in a rowboat going X miles, and the current is going like, you know, some other miles, and how long does it take him to get to town? It's like, 'Who cares? Who wants to go to town with a guy who drives a rowboat?
===================================
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY OF MIRA SORVINO
Beautiful Girls (1996) .... Sharon Cassidy
Mighty Aphrodite (1995) .... Linda Ash
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY OF LISA KUDROW
Hotel for Dogs (Widescreen Edition) (2009) .... Lois Scudder
... aka Das Hundehotel (Germany)
Wonderland (2003) .... Sharon Holmes
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY OF JANEANE GAROFALO
Wonderland (2003) .... Joy Miller
Mystery Men (1999) .... The Bowler
The Cable Guy (Full Screen) (1996) .... Medieval Times Waitress
The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996) .... Abby
Reality Bites (10th Anniversary Edition) (1994) .... Vickie Miner
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY OF ALAN CUMMING
Josie and The Pussycats (2001) .... Wyatt Frame
Spice World (1997) .... Piers
Romy: Have a "Romy and Michele" day!
 Brings you right back! May 13, 2009
R. Snelling
I LOVE LOVE LOVE this movie. My friends and I can quote it word for word! To have all of the songs all together on a cd is awesome! Great Roadtrip CD! If you know the movie, every song takes you back to the scene in the movie and you live it all again!
This One Hits It On The Head - Time After Time March 26, 2009
KH (NC Smokies, US)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion (1997) Mira Sorvino, Lisa Kudrow
If you hated your years in high school (and I imagine probably everyone but the select few "populars" did...ergo the wide appeal of this film!!) then you will connect with this satiric, wild ride chock-full of witty dialogue & brilliant characterizations.
Before a scant 5 minutes have passed in this film, the scriptwriters get your attention right out of the starting gate with great lines between the title characters such as: "You know we've seen Pretty Woman like 36 times and I never get tired of making fun of it" and later on in a nightclub when they determine that there are just no hot guys there and decide to dance with each other, Romy wonders if it would be better to be a lesbian. Michelle asks her if she wanted to try having sex together just to see if she was. "Oh no" Romy says "the idea of having sex with a woman just freaks me out." But then after a moment of careful reflection concludes "but...if neither of us has gotten married by the time we're 30, ask me again."
This movie took a chance on hiring what were then relatively new to the game players (Alan Cumming - "I am invincible" Boris from Golden Eye, Mira Sorvino from Mighty Aphrodite and Jeane Garafolo - Carmine the Bowler's daughter from Mystery Men) and was rewarded with the complex portrayals that usually come with older & more experienced actors. We all know how people can get stuck in a time warp and feel that either high school or college was the best years of their lives and never grow out of it. Such teen-angst-turned-impenetrable-adult-fortress is a hard one to pull off, but this cast does it beautifully. I particularly liked the quirky underlying Wizard of Oz-ish There's No Place Like Home theme - or in our heorines' case - There's No Better Person To Be Than Yourself.
And the movie's title provides the perfect platform for the double entrende of the concept 'Reunion'. Our 2 girls discover on their road trip that the reunion they really wanted was with themselves and to reach a true understanding of how wonderfully original, kooky and happy they really are.
Another dvd ready for an UPGRADE. March 8, 2009
Non Trek- freak (Omaha, NE USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This film is really funny, Lisa Kudrow and Janeane Garafolo steal the show. If you never really fit in in high school you'll love this hilarious comedy about finding out that not being part of the IN crowd is really not a bad thing, as well as learning to love who you are, and what makes you different is what makes you a true and unique person. The film is in 5.1 surround but is not in anamorphic(enhanced for 16 x 9 t.v.)widescreen.
Romey & Michelle Rock! December 16, 2008
Taheen Lopez (United States- San Diego, CA)
I thought ROMEY & MICHELLES HIGH SCHOOL REUNION was an awesome hilarious movie about 2 not so bright Southern Californian blondes who attend their 10-year class reunion in Tucson who have nothing special or remarkable to share with their former classmates at the reunion, but Romey & Michelle(Mira Sorvino, Lisa Kudrow)end up getting their little sweet revenge on all the people who wronged them in high school at the conclusion of this movie when Romey & Michelle make up and put an end to their differences with a great happy ending of this movie when Romey & Michelle start a clothing business in L.A.
ROMEY & MICHELLE'S HIGH SCHOOL reunion also plays a lot of cool classic songs from the 1980's like TURNING JAPANESE by The Vapors, KARMA CHAMELEON by Culture Club, OUR LIPS ARE SEALED by The Go Go's, I WANT CANDY by Bow Wow Wow, HEAVEN IS A PLACE ON EARTH by Belinda Carlise, EVERYBODY HAVE FUN TONIGHT by Wang Chung, WE'VE GOT THE BEAT by The Go Gos, etc., plus Romey & Michelle's High School Reunion was also like a movie that took us back to memory lane on life in the 80's.
I also think this was Lisa Kudrows best performance in all the movies she's ever done and was even more impressive than her ditzy Pheobe Buffay character on FRIENDS.
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