This is such a solid movie about girlhood and its influence on messy, complicated adulthood. I first saw this movie when I was the age of the younger cast (the "Then" group), and now I'm closer in age to the "Now" cast. Everything resonated about their reunion in their thirties -- from the awkward conversations, the guilt of not being around each other often, and then the hospital scene with the baby delivery. The back-and-forth narrative really holds up in showing how the girls' last summer before they drifted apart really planted seeds for their complicated adult lives:
- Chrissy (Ashleigh Ashton Moore, Rita Wilson), the most cautious and naive of the friends but also curious about 'the birds and the bees,' is the one who doesn't leave the neighborhood and marries her high school sweetheart. She's also the first of the friends to have a baby;
- Teeny (Thora Birch, Melanie Griffith) is obsessed with movies and her body image; she later becomes a celebrated actress who experiments with breast augmentation;
- Samantha (Gaby Hoffmann, Demi Moore) goes through it - her parents divorce, she almost drowns, her interest in the occult gets sidelined during their last seance scene. She finds refuge in science fiction writing, but struggles with being vulnerable;
- Roberta (Christina Ricci, Rosie O'Donnell) is still grieving her mother's death; as an ob-gyn, older Roberta helps shepherd her best friend (Chrissy) safely into motherhood. Both Ricci and O'Donnell said the character was initially written as a lesbian, but some of the context was written out last minute due to test audience feedback-- however, it would have been compelling to keep the queer context in for the character, considering her 1970s arc (taping her chest, pretending to drown to see if her friends would perform CPR, disinterest in Devon Sawa for most of the movie, etc).
I know Christina Ricci is now in Yellowjackets (which is also about a 90s group of girls in a back-and-forth timeline, but add cannibalism) but I could seriously see "Now and Then" being the premise for a limited series -- think "This is Us" crossed with "Big Little Lies."
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