I first saw Mystic Pizza on a rented VHS, from our video store, all the way back in late 1988 or early 1989, when it hit home video. My dad picked it out, and it was the kind of indie movie he liked: nothing too artsy or experimental, just a good story and some good acting. In other words, a studio movie, but without movie stars.
Well, movie stars yet. The main thing that’s changed in the 35 or so years since I first watched Mystic Pizza is the status of its cast, primarily one Julia Roberts, who would of course follow it up with Steel Magnolias, which resulted in her first Oscar nomination, and Pretty Woman, which resulted in her becoming one of the biggest stars on the planet. So watching Mystic Pizza in 2025 isn’t about a good story and some good acting, the way it was in 1988 (or 1989); it’s about watching one of the rockets of contemporary popular culture, as she was about to blast off.
And it’s all there. Roberts might not have fully understood the technical specifics of movie acting, but she had something that couldn’t be taught. The full power of her charisma becomes evident early on, in a bar scene where she steals the attention of her eventual beau from his uptight, dull date. But even before she starts sinking shots on the pool table, before she even says anything, you find yourself watching her watch what’s going on. Director Donald Petrie keeps putting her in tight close-ups, nothing more than reaction shots, but she has that undefinable yet undeniable thing; the camera just loves her, and you can’t stop looking at her.
But that goes for the entire cast, which is full of future stars—or, at the very least, future familiar faces—all ridiculously young and so sexy. It’s an ensemble picture, but if there is a lead, a focal point and recipient of the most screen time, it’s the delightful Annabeth Gish. She’d appeared in Hiding Out opposite Jon Cryer the year before, the closest any of these leads had come to a big role in a big movie, and Kit, the good girl on her way to Yale University who falls into an unfortunate relationship with a married man, seems like the breakout role—unless, apparently, you’re sharing the screen with Julia Roberts. It’s hard not to draw a parallel between their onscreen dynamic and their offscreen fates; Kit resents Roberts’ Daisy for getting all the attention.
The third lead, and their story, is that of Jojo, played by the wonderful Lili Taylor, who is heartfelt and grounded and perfect as the girl whose boyfriend Bill is pushing her to get married (or, after the disastrous ceremony that opens the movie, to get married really this time). She loves the guy, but recognizes that settling down with him means settling down for a life in Mystic, Connecticut, and maybe she’s not quite ready to settle just yet. This is all understandable, yet lent genuine complexity by the marvelous performance of lil’ ol’ Vincent D’Onofrio, with his HEART on his SLEEVE, as Bill. “I’m tellin’ you, Jo, that I love you,” he pleads. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” And it’s hard not to feel for him – and her.
D’Onofrio is about the only likable guy in the thing; William R. Moses, as Kit’s employer/crush, is just slimy, and Adam Storke as “Charles Gordon Winsor Jr.” (the preppiest name ever put to celluloid) never makes us believe he’s anything more than a rich douche, though the way Roberts looks at him, you almost believe he’s as wonderful as she does. But the guys don’t matter anyway; what’s important here is the three-girl dynamic, which is both entertaining and believable (you totally buy that they’ve been friends and co-workers this long). And Conchata Ferrell (who would later spar, memorably, with Roberts in Erin Brockovich) finds just the right matronly note as their employer and confidante.
But everybody in Mystic Pizza gets a chance to shine. There is some genuinely complex acting happening in the scene after Kit and Tim finally succumb to their desires, only to come back to his home and find his wife has returned early; even better is the scene just after, as Taylor drives and freaks out and talks a mile a minute while Gish sits next to her, just a shell, broken. “I just feel so stupid,” she cries to Roberts, and then she asks, simply, “Why does it hurt so much?”
And maybe that’s what’s surprising here – these moments of raw, open-wound acting that we’ve come to not expect from gentle, modest indie dramas. When Daisy sees Charles through the window of the country club, the way that moment hits and registers on Roberts’s face is what good movie acting is about. But the way she pivots, the rawness and emotional force of what follows (“I WANNA KILL HIM I’M SO STUPID”) catches us off-guard, as does the quiet, resigned melancholy of her subsequent announcement: “I fucked up.”
In that scene, director Amy Holden Jones (who co-wrote the script with Perry Howze, Randy Howze, and Driving Miss Daisy scribe Alfred Uhry) fakes us out; we think it’s going to play out in the obvious way, the way it has (and would) in a million other movies, and then there’s more. This happens again, to even more devastating effect, in one of Daisy and Charles’s later scenes, when he brings her home to meet his parents and takes the opportunity to stand up for her, loudly and grandly. And she sees right through him.
And maybe that’s what’s made Mystic Pizza stand the test of time, more than the wattage of its stars or the coziness of its milieu. This isn’t just a warm movie, or a romantic one, or a funny one, though it’s certainly all of those things. It’s a movie that knows that indulging in those qualities doesn’t also mean playing dumb, and talking down to your audience. Petrie and his writers know we’ve seen movies like this, and know how these stories usually go — and make a conscious decision to be better and smarter than that.
“Mystic Pizza” is streaming on Amazon Prime, Kanopy, Hoopla, the Roku Channel, and MGM+.
