Such a frustrating disappointment

So much average

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Anna Chlumsky should have won an Academy award for this movie.

1972. Vada Sultenfuss (played by Anna Chlumsky) is an intelligent, bubbly, hypochondriacal 11-year old girl. Her father, Harry (Dan Aykroyd), is a mortician and a widower. Her best friend is Thomas J Sennett (Macaulay Culkin). Then her father hires a new receptionist, Shelly (Jamie Lee Curtis) and life will never be the same again.Wonderful movie, and so much better than I expected. From the title and synopsis I thought it was going to be some sort of romantic drama made for teens/pre-teens. However, it is much much more than that. A great examination of love and loss, life, death and renewal and growing up. Very emotional, especially in the final few scenes.Anna Chlumsky is great as Vada. Most child characters end up being irritating, as they tend to be written for children and acted in bratty fashion. Vada's character is wonderful and Anna Chlumsky, in her second movie and first major role, gives a superb performance. Sadly, unlike her co-star Macaulay Culkin, her career never really took off after this and it took until the series Veep in 2012 before she got the sort of role she deserved.On that note, Macaulay Culkin's role is more subdued, has less screen time and less dialogue-intense than Chlumsky's. He does a solid job though.Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis put in good performances too.

I just watched this movie again for the first time in probably twenty years. This movie really had a pretty big impact on my childhood, and it's funny because I can't really remember where I saw it, but I know it probably wasn't more than once, it might have been at the movies...but it might have been once or twice on VHS. A big part of the mystique of this movie is that it was released in the early 90's, but seemingly set in the 70's, and it's done so well you wouldn't even notice. I had the biggest crush on the girl at the time (Chlumsky), and I totally identified with the kid (Culkin), especially because I had a very close brush with death and almost died after having an anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting a year or two before. So this movie really spoke to me as a kid. I really felt like I was the kid in the movie.. which was a weird feeling. Watching it now twenty years later and it's quite a different perspective that you get. I identify much more with Aykroyd and Curtis. I suppose that's only natural. But the issues the movie deals with are timeless, and it does it with a respectability and competence that you don't see very often. The last twenty minutes of this movie will have crying pretty much constantly. It's a beautiful movie, and it's very rare that a movie can elicit such emotions across such a time span.

The story of friendship in this movie is so beautiful and I can't restrain myself from crying towards the end of the movie. Both Vada and Thomas is a good actor.The movie is great, but I think the friendship of Vada and Thomas J. is not concrete enough to make it heart-wrenching at the end maybe because there isn't enough laughter in their days that makes people reminisce about when the tragedy happen. but still, the tragedy is good enough to make people cry.But their friendship is great and so tragic that it is almost unfair to Vada for losing important people from her life.