“Have a Romy and Michele day!” exhort the title characters of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion near the end of their movie, and the entire preceding 90 minutes is proof that having a Romy and Michele day is about the best that anyone could hope for. Twenty-five years ago this week, Romy White (Mira Sorvino) and Michele Weinberger (Lisa Kudrow) arrived in theaters as what one studio executive hoped would be the female versions of Wayne and Garth, although to many moviegoers, they probably looked more like knock-offs of Alicia Silverstone’s Cher Horowitz from Clueless (the two colorful, fashionable movies share a costume designer, Mona May).
That probably contributed to the mediocre box-office returns for Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, but it was wholly inadequate to prepare viewers for the sheer joys of this weird, wonderful movie. Romy and Michele aren’t Wayne and Garth or Cher Horowitz; they’re completely distinctive creations, originated in screenwriter Robin Schiff’s stage play Ladies Room and brought to beautifully strange life by Sorvino and Kudrow. Director David Mirkin introduces Romy and Michele in their Venice Beach apartment, sitting side-by-side in their twin beds like Bert and Ernie.
From the outside, their lives don’t look particularly appealing: Romy works as a cashier at a Jaguar dealership, while Michele is unemployed. They’re both single, and they’ve been roommates for the past decade, since graduating from high school. And yet they couldn’t be happier, blissfully watching Pretty Woman for perhaps the hundredth time, dressing in their eye-catching self-created outfits and spending weekends at nightclubs where the only people they dance with are each other. Schiff cheekily pokes at the obvious queer subtext, as Michele wonders if they should try having sex to see if they might enjoy being lesbians, and Romy cheerfully responds to check with her again if they haven’t gotten married by the time they’re 30.
Romy and Michele don’t have to be romantically involved to be perfect for each other. Like Jay and Silent Bob, they’re “hetero life mates,” and the movie is a celebration of their unique and inspiring friendship. Male duos like this are common in movie comedies, from Cheech and Chong to Bill and Ted, but Romy and Michele are the rare pair of female characters allowed to be just as delightfully dim-witted as their male counterparts, without ever becoming the target of the movie’s jokes. Other characters may make fun of Romy and Michele, but Schiff, Mirkin and the stars are always on their side—and so is the audience.
The emotional arc finds these oblivious underachievers realizing that what they have is exactly what they need, and that the approval of other people is meaningless. It’s only after Romy and Michele hear about their 10-year high school reunion from grumpy, caustic former classmate Heather Mooney (Janeane Garofalo) that they start to question their life choices. Faced with a questionnaire about what they’ve been up to since high school, they decide that their lives aren’t good enough, that they need to manufacture a career success story in order to impress the people who mocked them during their teen years.
Romy and Michele’s hilarious guilelessness is what makes the movie so charming, and their decision to claim to have invented Post-It Notes is the kind of brilliant idiocy that fills Schiff’s screenplay. Mirkin, a TV veteran making his feature debut, channels some of the oddness of his short-lived Chris Elliott cult sitcom Get a Life, and Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion is full of bizarre digressions that shouldn’t work.
There are extensive flashbacks featuring actors who are way too old to play teenagers. There’s a lengthy dream sequence that goes on for so long that it concludes with a flash-forward to 70 years in the future. There’s one of the most inexplicable yet thrilling dance sequences in cinema history, a triumphant moment at the reunion for Romy, Michele and nerd-turned-mogul Sandy Frink (Alan Cumming), set to Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” There are so many quotable non sequiturs that the movie became a source of memes decades after its release.
It all succeeds thanks to the central performances from Sorvino and Kudrow, both coming off massive hits that helped the movie get made. Sorvino develops a unique way of speaking that makes Romy sound like a cross between a Valley girl and an Eastern European immigrant, and Kudrow matches it with a sort of deadpan agreeableness, turning even single-word responses into sources of understated comedy (listen to the many ways she says “ow” as she rolls over the top of Sandy’s limo after being struck).
You could call Romy and Michele immature, but they’re getting more out of life than everyone they know, from bitter high school mean girl Christie Masters (Julia Campbell) to the mega-rich Sandy, who has millions of dollars but just wants a date with Michele. He may end up getting what he wants, but nothing will ever be as important to Romy and Michele as each other. Even their major mid-film falling-out is resolved with a tossed-off “Duh!” They’re having a Romy and Michele day every day. The rest of us are just lucky we get to witness it. 
