Peggy Sue Got Married

The only reason anyone, ever, will watch this movie.

I had to drink so much wine to get through this film that any passer by might have thought I’d just christened an entire fleet. 1986’s Peggy Sue Got Married is an affront to heterosexualism.

First of all, any movie where Helen Hunt is your most attractive female is a movie in some serious trouble. Really, she’s a 3 at best. Her eyelids look like they are the heaviest thing known to mankind, and her eyebrows seems to be doing everything in their power to escape her face and take refuge in her hairline.

Secondly you have not one, but two absolute assholes for leading men. Seriously, at what point did someone say, “Well, we have Nicolas Cage already, but I just don’t think we have enough stupidity. How about we get Jim Carrey as well?” You can imagine that this guy was fired shortly after saying this.

Jim Carrey and Nicolas Cage? It’s a competition in ridiculousness. They seem to try to best each others idiocy at every turn. Jim Carrey does his Jim Carrey bit, “Oh, look at me, I’m double jointed and can pull faces. Hurr Durr.” And Nicolas Cage, for a reason I was not able to determine, talks like Peewee Herman the whole fucking time. I didn’t think it possible that Cage’s acting could get noticeably worse, but I was wrong. So very, very wrong. Nicolas Cage wrong.

Ok, our protagonist. There was a time, somewhere in the distant past, where Kathleen Turner didn’t look like a burns victim. A time when she was marginally attractive. A time when she was believable as a leading lady. This was a time before Peggy Sue Got Married, because she looks older that she actually was, and she was 32 then, so she looked pretty haggard. What kind of idiot could ever believe that Kathleen Turner was still in high school? I’ll tell you. Exactly the same kind of idiot who cast Jim Carrey and Nicolas Cage. What kind of horrid duo is that? One's incapable of acting serious and the other is incapable of acting, period.

The only reason Cage got the part is because the director – big shot Francis Ford Coppola – is his uncle. That also explains how the other half of the cast were chosen. Who in Hollywood isn’t related to this guy? He’s like a Mormon or something.

Anyway, Jim Carrey’s funniest line is when he’s too busy cutting a line of coke to talk. That’s right, Jim Carrey is a nasty coke fiend with a crew cut and an overbite you could spelunk in. I’m just going to let you think for a minute of what Jim Carrey would be like on cocaine. I don’t think there is yet a word to describe that terrifying thought. I imagine it would be like giving the complete works of Sylvia Plath to a teenage girl. Over-kill.

I’m not even going to bother explaining the premise in anything other than the briefest of mentions. Mostly because it’s shit, but also because it made me angry. It’s 1986 and Peggy Sue feints while attending her 25^th high school reunion after realizing her life has gone to shit and having 3 kids gave her a figure which could be best described as ‘Grimace-like’. She wakes up in her high school in 1960 and is convinced she has died. Unfortunately she’s wrong and we are subjected to her vain attempts to sleep with a communist, fix her mistakes and relive poor life choices before she... doesn’t change a fucking thing. Really movie? You’ve had me sitting here for 96 agonizing minutes only to come full circle and end up the same as it otherwise would have been had she not time travelled to her graduation? This plot is the height of callousness.

Absolutely nothing changes from her attempts to change the past. Mostly because she’s an idiot and a woman, but also because the writers didn’t seem to give half a shit. There is no point to this film. You could watch the first 15 minutes and the last 5 minutes, skipping everything in between, and still get the message that she loves Nicolas Cage and that her life sucks. Shit, go eat a handful of anti-depressants Peggy, you slut.

This movie sucked so much it inhaled the hairs right out of my nut sack. If you’re young enough to still have your original teeth, then this movie will probably make you hate your fellow man.

If, however, you’re like my mum and predate the French Revolution, then you’d probably enjoy this monument to Coppola’s hubris.