Peggy Sue Got Married

Peggy Sue Got Married is a lot of things - a human comedy, a nostalgic memory, a love story - but there are times when it is just plain creepy, because it awakens such vivid memories in us. Read full review

Not since the heyday of Frank Capra, perhaps, has there been a movie that so seamlessly combines screwball comedy with get-out-your-handkerchiefs heart. Peggy Sue Got Married isn't about solving life's problems, it's about accepting them, in a world where love doesn't conquer all, but conquers enough. And in the hands of director Francis Coppola, that message makes what could have been merely a delightful lark about time travel into something much more. Read full review

You go to Peggy Sue Got Married expecting '60s nostalgia, "a blast from the past," Buddy Holly and lime-green leisure suits. You get all that, but nothing prepares you for the rush of real emotion the film generates, for its poignance, its reassurance or its high of pure pleasure. Read full review

Droll, pungent, and superbly told, Peggy Sue Got Married is more than a return to form for Francis Coppola. It's a film that reveals a new depth, a new sensitivity and a new sureness of technique for the 47-year-old director, a film that marks Coppola's entry into a rich, mature period. Read full review

In Peggy Sue Got Married, Francis Coppola takes a familiar, sitcomish premise -- the one about a grown woman who time-travels back to her high-school days -- and invests it with rich and surprising colors. Imagine a paint-by-numbers comic book put in the hands of a Rembrandt; the bold comic outlines remain, but the subject is transformed by the dark palette and subtle brushwork into a tale reverberating with complex, adult emotions. [6 Oct 1986, p.73]

This is handsomely made (cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth lights the reunion as if it were already part of some magical realm), but what lingers about the movie are the quieter, actorly moments. Read full review

Ignore the ridiculous [spoiler omitted] ending of this film, and you have a much more fatalistic exercise in which Coppola eschews easy laughs in favour of the exposure of feeling and the fact that these people's lives, however empty, matter to them. Turner is in the Oscar class. Read full review

Everything finally came together under the sensitive directorial hand of, yes, Francis Coppola. The supporting cast is splendid. The film's occasional lapses never puncture the airy tone; they are easily forgiven, like Peggy Sue and her friends, whose only sin was to grow up. This prom-night balloon of a movie floats easily above the year's other exercises in '50s nostalgia. If you dare reach for it, it will land smartly in your heart. Read full review

What makes this treatment unique is that the jokes aren’t so much derivative of pop culture, but are instead found in the learned wisdom of a middle-aged woman reacting to her own teenage dilemmas. Read full review

The film features good acting from almost everyone, the one notable exception being the annoying Cage who adopts a grating constricted voice for the role.

Peggy Sue is by no means a masterpiece of movie art, but it is an example of the sort of thoroughly enjoyable middle-brow Hollywood picture - clever, thoughtful, literate - that went missing about the time Peggy Sue got married. [10 Oct 1986]

The film is all very wistful, and at its best moments has an exquisite mystery to it, the lure of the memory play. And even when it isn't working, there's Turner to watch. That's something. [10 Oct 1986, p.D1]

Most of the time, Peggy Sue Got Married is either underdeveloped or simply not thought through. The way the film gets Peggy Sue into and out of the past is no less lame than the explanation for Bobby Ewing's recent resurrection in "Dallas." So much key information is missing or left uncertified or undramatized that the film appears to have been edited by termites. Read full review

Coppola's efforts to bring depth to this material that has no depth make the picture seem groggy. It's as if he were trying to direct the actors to bring something out of themselves when neither he nor anyone else knows what's wanted.

It's grave, lumbering, arrhythmic, and bloated, an emotional hogwallow of catchpenny insights and easy sentimentality...In short, a real bagful. Read full review