At her 25th High School reunion, former Prom Queen Kathleen Turner ponders the same question we all ask at a certain age: if I knew then what I know now, what would I do different? But unlike the rest of us she gets the chance to change her destiny when a fainting spell sends her back to the year 1960, where she is reunited with the past while retaining a full memory of her future, which will include a failed marriage to her High School sweetheart. It might draw unfair comparisons to 'Back to the Future', but this is no dumb farce; it's a sentimental and sometimes touching comic drama about the powerful attraction of nostalgia. The script includes the usual comic anachronisms of all time-travel plots, and ignores the familiar paradoxes (why doesn't Peggy Sue remember as an adult at the beginning of the film the second adolescence she is soon to experience?). A confusing climax further stretches credibility way beyond the breaking point, but even with these few, nagging drawbacks and dubious central casting (Kathleen Turner looks too old for a teenager; husband Nicholas Cage is too young to be convincingly middle-aged) the film still marked a welcome return to Earth for director Francis Ford Coppola.
Review of Peggy Sue Got Married
