Peggy Sue Got Married

Another of the movies I had the chance to DVR during a free preview weekend that I hadn't blogged about before is Peggy Sue Got Married. It's going to be on overnight tonight at 1:55 AM on Epix, and again on Wednesday night on TCM as part of a night of movies going back in time. (I have a different movie to blog about as part of that lineup, however.)

Kathleen Turner plays Peggy Sue, a woman with two children in an unhappy marriage to discount appliance store owner Charlie Bodell (Nicolas Cage). They were high school sweethearts and married pretty much straight out of school, but Peggy is planning to divorce Charlie, so she'll be going to her 25th high school reunion alone, wearing a dress she wore back in 1960 when she graduated high school.

Everybody seems surpisingly OK meeting everybody else after all these years, with a lot of people liking Peggy Sue since she was apparently popular back in 1960. The one person Peggy wishes she could catch up with is Michael Fitzsimmons, who was on the track team back then and dropped out of society to become a writer: the committee couldn't find him.

Part of the reunion involves naming a King and Queen much like they'd have back at the prom, except that this isn't a couple, but people who have become successful in some way. At least, that's the way it is for the king; for whatever reason Peggy Sue got named queen even though she's a housewife. The committee brings up a cake for the king and queen, and... Peggy Sue faints.

Peggy Sue wakes up, and she's still in the high school gym where the reunion was being held. But she's on her back, with people telling her that it's not uncommon for people to pass out like that after donating blood. The doors open, and a sign reveals that this is the Spring 1960 blood drive.

It's not only this sign that makes Peggy Sue realize something's up. All her friends trying to help her seem remarkably like they were back in high school. As far as they all know, it's 1960, and has been ever since January 1, and won't be 1985 for another 25 years. Peggy Sue is the only one who seems to have any memory of it having been 1985 before she fainted.

Peggy Sue returns home to find her parents (Barbara Harris and Don Murray) are the same age they were back in 1960. Peggy also realizes that her grandparents (Maureen O'Sullivan and Leon Ames) are still alive, which gets Peggy emotional, since as far as she knew before she fainted, they had been dead for years. Peggy now has another chance to see them again, this time with all the knowledge she has as an adult.

That adult knowledge also makes Peggy Sue consider that perhaps she has the possibility of doing things differently in life, such that she won't wind up in a troubled marriage to Charlie. She goes on a date with Fitzsimmons (Kevin O'Connor) and even talks to the nerdy science guy Richard Norvik (Barry Miller), who as she knows will go on to be a big success in life. She asks Richard about time travel, and he finally realizes that something's happened such that Peggy Sue really is from 25 years in the future.

As for Charlie, who married Peggy Sue in the first go-round, he's obviously dating her. He works for his dad's appliance store (which is of course how he ends up with the store we see in the commercial at the beginning of the movie), but is also a singer who has a doo-wop band with a couple of classmates (watch for a very young Jim Carrey here as Walter). Charlie had felt in the first life that Peggy Sue made him give up singing and songwriting and settle down to the appliance business, which made him resentful. Now, he's still pursuing her and not understanding why she's seeing other guys.

Finally, as Peggy Sue's 18th birthday approaches, she takes the chance to ditch Charlie for a day to go see her grandparents. Grandma actually believes Peggy Sue's story that she's from the future. Grandpa, for his part, belongs to a masonic lodge-like society that has a ceremony that could possibly take her back to 1985....

Peggy Sue Got Married is an interesting little fantasy buoyed by some really good performances. I found myself thinking as the movie was going on that it's quite hard to pull this sort of movie off well since you've got a whole bunch of people who are playing themselves at both 18 and 43. The real-life actors were of varying ages: Turner in her early 30s, Cage in his early 20s, and everybody else in between. Still, I think they all succeed, with Turner obviously being by far the best since the movie revolves around her. There's also the question of how the time travel is going to be resolved, which also works here, although I won't reveal the outcome.

I can definitely recommend Peggy Sue Got Married if you haven't seen it before. It seems to be out of print on DVD, although available on streaming if you can do that. As I said at the beginning, if you don't have the Epix package, you'll still be able to catch it on TCM later this week.