Review of My Girl (1991) by Kyle20Ellis — 01 Apr 2022

... and I am truly sorry it took me so long to see it. It really is as good as the other reviewers say. It is everything the film promised to be, and these were the reasons why I loved other movies like Stand By Me so much.

My Girl is beautiful, it is charming and it is poignant. I have been prone to cry in movies like the Elephant Man, Fearless, Camille and Stand By Me, not to mention and you'll probably think me weird Harry Potter 6.

Here, especially the ending I bawled like a baby, and I am not afraid to admit that. But what struck me most was the innocence of My Girl. The scenes with the two children are some of the most charming scenes in any film I have seen.

The cinematography is beautiful and the scenery is breathtaking. The direction is next to faultless, and the screenplay has a sense of subtlety and poignancy. The film's length is perfect, and the romance between Harry and Shelley wasn't cloying at all.

The music is truly beautiful, and brings warmth and beauty to the proceedings. The performances were truly professional, with charming low-key performances from Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd and Anna Chlumsky is wholly believable in a more complex child performance than one would expect from her.

And Macaulay Culkin was so cute here, even cuter than he was in the Home Alone movies. The film also has a sweet heart warming story, that avoids becoming overly sentimental. I really hate how under appreciated this gem is.

It isn't the best movie ever made, but it doesn't try to be. It is essentially a charming and poignant film, that I think critics have misunderstood in the past. It is more than a bittersweet kids movie, it is simply a pleasant little gem.