Romy and Michele's High School Reunion

• Main
• YMMV
• Crowners
  • Awesome
• Wikipedia
• All Subpages
• Create New

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion is a 1997 comedy about two friends, Romy (Mira Sorvino) and Michele (Lisa Kudrow), who go back to their high school reunion. They decide to prove their classmates wrong about how they were perceived as losers in high school and pretend to be successful business women. Hilarity Ensues.

---

Tropes used in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion include:

• All Just a Dream: About a third of the movie.
• Alpha Bitch: Christie, even years after high school.
• Broken Aesop: The Aesop of the movie is ostensibly "be yourself!" and is highlighted when Romy and Michele change from their business women suits into the bright, colorful clothes that they made themselves and everyone likes it! Of course, at the end, the goth aggressively frumpy chick is seen getting a makeover from Romy and Michele. Apparently, you should follow your own style, but only if it's cheery, bright and sexy. Aggressive frumpiness is not acceptable.
  • Unless you're being frumpy as a defense mechanism because being yourself in a high school setting leaves you open for others to take advantage of you.
• The Chain of Harm: Heather is surprised to learn that the protagonists, who she'd resented at school, were in turn looked down on by the "A group". She's delighted to learn that she herself had consistently made another girl at school feel miserable.
• Class Reunion: Duh
• Conversational Troping: The movie opens with Romy and Michele watching Pretty Woman and commenting on one of the Tear Jerker scenes. They are also rather Genre Savvy about their own genre: High School movies and comedy movies in general.
• Cover Identity Anomaly: Romy and Michelle's claim to be "successful businesswomen" lacks a few vital details; such as what business they are in.
• Deadpan Snarker: As usual, Janeane Garofalo's character.
• Dumb Blonde: Dumb but loveable Romy and Michele. Hell, the Tagline for this film is "The Blonde Leading The Blonde."
• Feigning Intelligence: They try to pass themselves off as inventors of the Post-It note... it doesn't work out so well
• Genius Ditz: Michele comes up with a Techno Babble explanation for her invention of "a special kind of glue" which is so plausible and off-the-cuff (see Throw It In, below) that she even surprises herself. Shame it was All Just A Dream.
• Girl Posse: Christie, Kelly, and Lisa. Except Lisa left the group and made something out of herself.
• Heterosexual Life Partners: Romy and Michele to a T.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Romy's alleged fatness as a teenager.
• Inventor of the Mundane: Michele claims she invented Post-It Notes (it's a lie to impress her old high school people).
• Kissing Cousins: Michele lost her virginity to her cousin Barry.
• Marilyn Maneuver: The downdraft from Sandy's helicopter gives Christine a very impressive one as the heroines leave.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Romy to Christie:

What the hell is your problem, Christie? Why the hell are you always such a nasty bitch? I mean, okay, so Michele and I did make up some stupid lie! We only did it because we wanted you to treat us like human beings. But you know what I realized? I don't care if you like us, 'cause we don't like you. You're a bad person with an ugly heart, and we don't give a flying fuck what you think!

• Rebel Relaxation: The Cowboy
• Right Through the Wall: Romy gets to borrow the Cool Car in return for closing the office blinds and faking The Immodest Orgasm with the mechanic so his colleagues can hear.
• The Slacker: Rare female example.
• Spell My Name with an "S": One L in Michele, people.
• Threesome Subtext: Sandy still has a crush on Michele, but doesn't bat an eyelid at her insistence that Romy dance with them as well. At the end, all three of them go home in his helicopter.
• Throw It In: Lisa Kudrow (who, let the record show, has a biology degree from Vassar) made up the entire glue formula on the spot.

Um, well, ordinarily when you make glue first you need to thermoset your resin and then after it cools you have to mix in an epoxide, which is really just a fancy-schmancy name for any simple oxygenated adhesive, right? And then I thought maybe, just maybe, you could raise the viscosity by adding a complex glucose derivative during the emulsification process and it turns out I was right!

• Valley Girl: They act so much like one but aren't rich.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: An interpretive dance between three people as an act of rebellion in their high school reunion, and then taking off in a helicopter.