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Mystic Pizza

Mystic Pizza

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Pretty Woman type movie
Review: This is a definite must have for fans of Julia Roberts. It is one of those movies that makes you feel good after watching it. It is about 3 girls growing up in a small new england town. One is supposed to be getting married, another is just struggling to live life, find a job and hopefully a rich husband and the other is getting ready to head off to college. Julia Roberts is one of these charachters and plays the older sister to one of the other charachters that I mentioned. It is the story of a typical summer that they spend together before one gets married, the other off to college, etc. All 3 of them work in a pizza place in a town called Mystic. It is a fun movie and if you like Pretty Woman, you will love this also. I have watched it probably 25 times. It's a "eat popcorn, chill out/hang out, nothing else going on" kind of movie. It is fun!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Have A Slice Of Pizza
Review: 1988's Mystic Pizza is an enjoyable film about three young Portuguese women who work at a pizzeria in the fishing/resort town of Mystic, CT. Julia Roberts stars as Daisy, a headstrong girl whose fast and loose behavior has not endeared her to her mother. Annabeth Gish plays her younger sister Kat, whose is the opposite of Daisy. She is quiet, brainy and is going to Yale to study astronomy. Lili Taylor plays Jojo who is the girl's best friend. She has a quirky and carefree disposition and at the beginning of the film leaves her fiancé, Bill, played by the underrated Vincent D'Onofrio, who is a local fisherman at the alter. The movie centers around the girl's place of employment, Mystic Pizza, which is run by the gruff, but caring Leona (Conchata Ferrell) whose pizza is famously regarded and guards the secret to her sauce with a zealot's devotion. Both Daisy and Kat fall for guys during the summer, Daisy with a lazy, knockabout trust fund kid Charlie (Adam Storke) and Kat with Tim Travers, a wealthy architect whom Kat is babysitting his daughter Phoebe. The movie is basically a predictable romantic comedy, but the actors are so likeable, that you'll find yourself being caught up in their stories and director Donald Petrie perfectly captures the beautiful southern Connecticut coast (the film was shot in Mystic as well as other Connecticut towns and Rhode Island). This film marked the first starring role for Julia Roberts and while it didn't catapult her to immediate stardom it set the blueprint for the type of role that would make her into the most popular actress in Hollywood. The film is also notable as it marks the film debut of Matt Damon who has a blink and you miss part as the ridiculously named Steamer who is Charlie's brother and appears in a scene at a dinner with Daisy meeting Charlie's family for the first time.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Yeah, it is a chick flick, and yeah, you will love it
Review: A 1989 Julia Robert film. She's one of 3 girls who work at a pizza parlor in Mystic, Connecticut, and each has her own set of guy troubles. Julia, the living-on-the-wild-side, sort-of-slutty townie falls for the slumming rich kid who comes to town; her sister (brainy, headed to Yale on scholarship) falls for a married man; the other one is in love with a big galoot of a local fisherman but just can't make up her mind to commit to marriage. And the fat-momma owner of the pizza place years for the day when the snobbish food critic will show up and sample her wares.
Order a pizza, pop the lid off a Pale Ale, kick of your shoes, and sit back for a kick-ass of a movie. It's great.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Three small town waitresses and their romances
Review: This 1988 romantic comedy is set in Mystic, Connecticut, a working-class fishing town where most of the inhabitants have a Portuguese background. The three stars are waitresses in the local pizzeria called Mystic Pizza. It's the summer after they've just graduated from high school and the most important thing in their lives are their romantic attachments. Lili Taylor walks down the aisle with her future husband but has cold feet at the last minute. Annabeth Gish, college bound, earns extra money babysitting and doesn't expect to fall in love with the married father of the child she babysits for. And Julia Roberts, then 21, with a yearning to rise above her prescribed life, falls in love with a wealthy Yale law student.

How it all plays out is predictable, with a laugh or two along the way. The film barely held my attention as my interest in the romantic goings on was lukewarm. More interesting to me though, was the social structure of the town, located near an upper class area and the sharply drawn differences between the two places. One of the most memorable scenes is when some Yale college students come into a working class bar and invite Julia Roberts to join them in a game of pool.

If you like romantic comedy, you might get a chuckle out of this.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Mystic Pizza (movie) & Special DVD Review - ****
Review: Back in the Eighties big hair was (literally) the height of fashion, and Julia Roberts possibly had the biggest hair of all. Mystic Pizza is a chance to reminisce over dodgy perms and dreadful rock music, for they were de rigueur in Mystic, Connecticut.
Three small town girls consider life, love and pizza. Class differences, age differences and plain old indifference prevail when all they want is just a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

Essentially this is a film about love and friendship, with the moral being (shock, gasp) that men may be unreliable but friends, well, won't. It's not a bad film; it's just not a great film, although the imminent stardom of the then relatively unknown Roberts shines through. Short on extras also, scene access is about it, the DVD is as disappointing as having to sit through this and not even get to find out what makes the Mystic Pizza so great!

Movie Specs:

Certificate: 15
Type of disc: Single layer, single-sided
No of chapters: 16
Film format/length: 1.85:1 / 16:9 anamorphic widescreen / 105 mins
Audio format: Dolby Surround 2.0
Director: Donald Petrie
Starring: Julia Roberts, Annabeth Gish, Lili Taylor
Year made: 1998

Special Features:

• Scene access
• Theatrical trailer
• Soundtrack in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish
• Subtitles in seven languages including German, French, Spanish, Dutch and Swedish
• Subtitles for the hearing impaired in English and German

Final Verdict:

PICTURE - ***

SOUND - ***

ENTERTAINMENT - **

EXTRAS - *

VALUE - **

OVERALL SCORE - ***

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Girl Movie
Review: This is definately a girl movie because it is all about the lives of 3 girls around 20 or so. I loved the fun they had together. They partied and danced, laughed and played tricks on each other and the guys they were involved with. Robert's character had alot of bravado and spirit. Taylor's was cute and funny, sweet and without anger. Gish's was sensitive and smart. She held back more when the other 2 partied or got crazy. I loved the town of Mystic, Ct. You know there really is a Mystic Pizza. I looked it up and they really have good pizza. It can be ordered frozen through air mail and some stores actually sell it in the eastern states. It sounds absolutely wonderful. My favorite would be the Seafood Delight, with clams and scallops. They even vouch to have the mysterious sauce. The film was based on this tiny restaurant. It has expanded and there are now two. I would like to go to Mystic, it seems like such a neat place to visit.

Lisa Nary

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Delicious entertainment
Review: There's a line from American Pie in which one of the young guys declares, "Women are like fine wine. They just get better with age." So true. All of the women in this movie are living proof of that, especially Annabeth Gish, who went from being merely girl-next-door pretty in Mystic Pizza, to the mature goddess we have seen on the X-Files.

Mystic Pizza is very much an ensemble movie, with no one person standing out above the rest. A very strong female cast is counterpointed by some solid male performances, such as that of the always superb Vince D'Onofrio - also check out The Cell, with Jennifer Lopez.

Beautifully filmed in Conn. New England, the movie is also a visual delight, and captures the reassuring simplicity of life in an Atlantic fishing community. I love Nova Scotia and Maine for the same reason. The original Mystic Pizza restaurant is still going strong and their website is well worth a visit.

All in all, a very sweet movie about real people and real family situations, and it remains one of my favorite movies of all time. I literally never tire of this modern classic. My only quibble is that the last spoken line is disturbingly unimaginative and anti-climactic. After crafting such a superb screenplay, the writers just seemed to run out of inspiration at the last hurdle. As Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A comedy/drama about sex, deceit, and the Mystic Pizza
Review: This story followesing the messed up love lives of three young waitresses is good because young people can relate. Some can relate to Kat (Anabelle Gish) who is the 'smart sister' with a crush on a more sophisticated man as opposed to fisherman like Bill. Some can relate to Daisy (Julia Roberts), 'The gorgeous sister' who is going no where but the back of sports cars. Others can relate to JoJo (Lili Taylor), a girl who's only way to show love is through sex. I think a lot of guys can relate to the male charecters also, like Bill (Vincent D'Onofrio), a man in love with a woman who won't commit or Charlie, (Adam Storke) a token rich boy who uses anything he can to get back at his father (including Daisy), and then there is Tim (William R. Moses) a gutless, cheating, liar. But despite thier different personalities the girls are all held together by love, Leona, and Mystic Pizza.
The chemistry between Lili Taylor (JoJo) and Vincent D'Onofrio (Bill) made their charecters very believable as compared to William Moses (Tim) and Annabelle Gish (Kat). Julia Roberts was amazing on her own, she always is, but Lili Taylor was outstanding.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Mystic Pizza on DVD
Review: This "sleeper" hit looks just as good today as it did when it was first released. It follows the trials and tribulations of three childhood friends. They all work as waitresses in a pizza parlor and all are at a crossroad in their life. Kat (Annabeth Gish) is preparing to leave home for Yale to begin a career in Astronomy. Daisey (Julia Roberts) Kat's sister, seems to be floundering, with no real direction to go in life, and JoJo (Lili Taylor, who gives the film's most comedic performance), is torn between her love for her fiance Bill, and settling down into a married life filled with screaming kids and massive weight gain.
The film intergrates all three stories and keeps the plot moving at a brisk pace. All three friends have very different personalities, allowing most of the audience to be able to identifiy with at least one of them. I will admit, however, that the ultra idealistic, goodie-goodie Kat does get on my nerves from time to time. (I particularly enjoyed the scene where Daisey hauls off and belts her across the face). The chemistry between the leads works extremely well which only strengthens the movie. Roberts gives a strong performance and shows the audience the first signs of the hollywood powerhouse she would soon become. The three leads are admirabley backed up by a strong supporting cast as well, most notably, Conchata Ferrell as the owner of the pizza parlor.
The DVD version has a sharp clear picture and good sound quality (although it's been my experience that most DVDs do)but I cannot give it a full "5 star" rating because, with the exception of a wide-screen format, the original theatrical trailer, and a language selection (provided by most {although not all} DVDs), this version offers no extras. No "voice over" commentary, no deleted scenes, no making of documentaries, no outtakes, nothing. Therefore, the DVD version of Mystic Pizza loses out on a perfect score. BUYER BEWARE: For those who haven't seen the film, the DVD cover gives the impression that it is a "Julia Roberts Movie" when, in reality it is actually an ensemble film.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Don't buy it for the Matt Damon crush!
Review: It's girl's night in, although less-than formative for a young Julia Roberts, in such later company as 'My Best Friend's Wedding' or 'The Mexican'-- a decidedly pedestrian romantic comedy that scores in the 'cute' category, but somehow does not deliver 'buildup, breakup, makeup' catharsis that I know all you girls crave in a film of this genre. Particularly interesting, though, is the reversal of classic sex-roles pioneered by Vincent D'Onofrio, when Bill, his character, declares to love-nymph Jo Jo (played by Lili Taylor) "I'm telling you that I love you... and all you love is my d***!"
It's three for one in the love-tryst column, with the action shifting nubilely from each of the sister's separate but inextricably linked soap-operas. The continuity of the three stories admittedly works, but no box of tissues needed. Oh, and you guys make sure you're comfortable, in case you fall asleep.
The unlikely and scarcely workable casting match of Roberts with object Adam Storke (the baby-faced favorite-son Charles) sours the appeal here, but, after all, 'These are the times to remember.'


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