Mystic Pizza is one of those films. A star-making, crowd-pleaser that it’s hard not to enjoy. Julia Roberts unleashes her career-defining smile at its earliest best, with superb supporting performances and a tiny role for an unknown Matt Damon that’ll leave you in stitches. And the best part is, the three wonderful leads are as young and hopeful as their characters. The film is infused with the naiveté and free-feeling emotion of youth, that only a cast of stars before the spotlight can provide.
Daisy (Roberts) works at Mystic Pizza, with her sister, Kat (Annabeth Gish) and their friend Jojo (Lili Taylor). In their small Connecticut town, the summer before Kat leaves them all behind and heads off to Yale has arrived. Taylor is superb as that feisty brand of woman that the eighties excelled at capturing, and kicks up a frenzy of activity when she leaves Bill (Vincent D’Onofrio) at the altar. Meanwhile, Kat feels her pragmatic armor crack when she starts falling for an all-American architect. The only problem is that she’s babysitting his kid while the mother’s out of town. And that leaves Daisy, the most brazen blue-collar firecracker of the bunch. As irony would have it in the sleepy town of Mystic, she falls for the richest kid around. Wouldn’t you know it?
Looking back, it seems like America itself was coming-of-age throughout the eighties. From the works of John Hughes, most notably The Breakfast Club, to almost any young Tom Cruise movie, Hollywood was all about that marvelous transitional hiccup between the joys of childhood and the responsibilities of adulthood. Mystic Pizza follows confidently, falling into place next to its most similar kin, specifically Diner. It’s a story of big-world hopes in small-town living, a microcosm of the American Dream and struggle. Whether its colonization, exploration, or Manifest Destiny itself, Americans love to get out of where they are. Or, at least, watch movies about it and dream.
Love her or hate her, Julia Roberts earned her career. She might slip into her go-to tricks more than we’d like in some roles, but it is her pervading positivism, undeniable beauty, and emotional authenticity that keep us coming back for more. She arrived in the last wave of true stars, the likes of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, before the Hollywood film had outgrown the actor. To watch Cruise, Pitt, and Roberts before they were businesspeople and megastars, when they were just the excited, immensely talented kids running Risky Business, dancing through Thelma and Louise, and becoming a Pretty Woman, is one of the great joys of their stories and this era of movies. The glimmer in Robert’s eyes contains that bouncy curiosity and joyful sharpness that is first and always the magic of Daisy in Mystic Pizza.
It is Lili Taylor, however, who runs away with the pizza this time around. Bill is an equal match, played beautifully by D’Onofrio, rugged and kind after losing his head in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and decades away from joining the wacky squad of Law and Order: C.I.. The movie is really about seeing Jojo come to her senses and go back to him. Her only obstacle is herself. Disturbed by the normalcy of her limited world in Mystic, she worries that marriage will be the final nail in the coffin of a potentially exciting life. The more she and Bill interact, however, the more we see how perfect they are. It feels like the best high school crush you ever had. But is staying in town and marrying that kid the thing to do? Or is that trying to hold onto her childhood when growing up is the thing to do?
Over two decades later, Mystic Pizza marches on. It was not the best of its kind, lacking punch in the third act, but it spoke with an idealistic voice that the ‘80s captured best. Its conflicts were simpler than today’s, uninterested in grappling with the darkness of humanity or the weight of mankind. Our world today is undergoing seemingly endless and staggering transition, while our stories have gotten darker, the messages bleaker. This may be the trumpet call for change, but in the meantime, sit down and have a slice with another time. Let yourself be that beautiful moment of hormonal frenzy again, when life was won or lost in a single decision.
BLU-RAY BONUS FEATURES
Nothing. But the movie alone is what you’d be paying for regardless. Take a bite of Mystic Pizza. It just might entrance you as well.
"Mystic Pizza" is on sale April 5, 2011 and is rated R. Comedy. Directed by Donald Petrie. Written by Amy Jones & Perry Howze & Randy Howze & Alfred Uhry. Starring Annabeth Gish, Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor, Vincent DOnofrio.
