MY GIRL – The Blu Review

How could you not love MY GIRL, the 1991 hit tale of friendship, romance and tragedy with that great cast? The story is set during the summer of 1972 and centers on Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chulumsky), an 11 year old tomboy. Her dad (Dan Aykroyd) is an undertaker and she lives in a funeral parlor. Her mom died during childbirth and her gramma (Ann Nelson) is losing her mind. When makeup artist Shelly (Jamie Leigh Curtis) starts working with her dad, they become close and eventually fall in love. Vada is jealous of her step-mother to be, but she has a best friend, the adorable Thomas J (Macaulay Culkin) who understands her and she can talk to him about anything. The most unbearable thing for Vada would be losing him, so she is absolutely distraught when tragedy strikes!

I saw MY GIRL when it was new and have not revisited it until I watched the new Blu-ray from Sony. Many thought MY GIRL was going to be a comedy when it first came out, but young kids expecting another HOME ALONE must have exited theaters in need of therapy. There are many funny moments sprinkled throughout the first 2/3 of the movie, but so much tragedy is stuffed into the final third that’s it’s a bit much, but I do commend the bold choice the screenwriters took in that regard. In the real world, a girl like Vada would need lots of counseling, yet the ending shows her in good spirits. This is a movie, of course, so it doesn’t affect the viewing experience, but you can’t help but watch and think “what more could possibly happen to this girl?”

MY GIRL will be released by Sony on Blu-ray March 17^th and We Are Movie Geeks has had a peek:

The AVC encoded image (1.85:1 aspect ratio) is sharp, but the indoor scenes, especially those in the funeral home, have a distracting grayish hue. The presentation is best in broad daylight, allowing colors to find life, offering naturalistic hues for the rural setting, while costuming and food items bring out a passable sense of red and yellow. Skintones are acceptable without being remarkable.

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA sound mix offers adequate care of the essentials, leading with crisp dialogue exchanges that preserve the juvenile performances. Scoring is sharp and pronounced, with satisfying instrumentation but little fullness.

The MY GIRL Blu contains a decent amount of extras:

• Audio Commentary: Is an interesting one in that it’s the film’s writer, Laurice Elehwany, doing all of the talking. It’s a nice change of pace and she goes into a lot of detail about the writing process and how things on screen differed from her original vision.
• A Day on the Set is a 5-minute montage of on-set footage.
• Original Behind the Scenes Featurette is a basic, 6-minute ‘making of’ doc
• Original Trailer