Beautiful Girls(1996)

Willie (Timothy Hutton) finds himself strangely developing feelings for Marty (Natalie Portman) (but is well aware of how inappropriate that pursuing her would be, given the fact that she is 13 years old), but when he talks to Michael (Noah Emmerich) about this, Michael reminds him of how young she is and suggests that this is just a way of him saying that he doesn’t want to grow up. The next day, when Willie joins Michael and his children at a frozen lake to both do some ice skating and hang out at Paul’s (Michael Rapaport) ice fishing shack there, he spots Marty skating with her friends. They get to talking privately, and she tells him that she has stopped seeing Andrew (a classmate whom she was attracted to that Willie knows about) because he “dorked out on her.” When he asks her if she is seeing anyone new, she replies that HE is now her boyfriend. After he reminds her that they have an age problem that gets in the way of that, she tells him to wait five years for her to turn 18 and then they can be together. Willie turns her down, explaining that, in five years, she won’t even remember him; she still has some changes to go through, and she will outgrow her feelings for him as they happen. Disappointed, she skates away.

The next day, Tommy (Matt Dillon) meets with Darian (Lauren Holly) at the town’s library, and he firmly tells Darian that they need to stop sleeping with each other because it is making both of them crazy, plus there is his girlfriend, Sharon (Mira Sorvino), and her husband, Steve (Sam Robards), to worry about. Darian tells him that she has worked things out so Steve doesn’t know about them, but Tommy again declares that they are through. She then tells him that she talked Steven out of accompanying her to their high school reunion tomorrow night, and she asks if Sharon won’t be joining him there, to which he bitterly replies that she already took care of that for him (Sharon already knows that he has cheated on her with Darian). Moments later, Darian leaves, but before she goes, she tells Tommy that this reunion will be good because they will be alone there, and they will also see if he has truly broken up with her or not.

That night, Willie is seen playing piano at Stanley’s (Pruitt Taylor Vince) bar, the Old Johnson Inn, when he is suddenly approached by Stanley’s beautiful cousin, Andera (Uma Thurman). He tries to flirt with her, but she turns him down, although she does accept an offer he subsequently makes to her to join him for some ice fishing at Paul’s shack. While they are there, they get to talking about their relationships with their romantic partners, and he brings up how he very much enjoys those feelings one experiences when they first fall in love but dislikes how those feelings seem to inevitably go away, and he also mentions that his girlfriend, Tracy (Annabeth Gish), is coming into town tomorrow to attend the high school reunion with him, but he feels ambivalent about it. He also tells Andera that he looks at her and thinks that it is amazing that she has a guy out there that gets to do all kinds of nice things with her and makes her happy, but she points out that there is a guy out there who thinks the same thing about Tracy, and he is jealous of him. She soon leaves the shack to make ready to return to her home in Chicago the next day. In the morning, Willie greets Tracy when she shows up at his father’s house, and with his feelings for her having been restored thanks to his conversation with Andera, he gives her a very loving embrace. That night, after having dinner with his father Dick (Richard Bright), his brother Bobby (David Arquette), and Tracy, Willie looks out a window and sees Marty storing her sled under her front porch. After he gets her attention, she lets him know that she is still disappointed, but he tells her that he hopes that they stay in touch as friends because he hopes to learn someday about what she is doing, because he thinks that, whatever it is, it will be amazing. She thanks him and smiles before heading back inside.

Later on, Willie, Tracy, Paul, Michael, Stanley, Kev (Max Perlich), and Gina (Rosie O’Donnell) go over to Michael’s and Sarah’s (Anne Bobby) house to have a pre-reunion party before going to the actual reunion, and Tommy decides to skip the reunion altogether so he won’t have to deal with Darian and heads to the Old Johnson Inn to have a few drinks. Darian goes to the reunion, and while she is there, she finds herself confronted by a classmate whom she used to bully. He tells her that, while she was beautiful back in those days, she was “mean as a snake”, and his words leave her a little shaken. After Tommy arrives at the Old Johnson Inn, he discovers that Steve is there with his friends, and Steve approaches him soon after and reveals that he knows that he has slept with Darian. Tommy looks at Steve’s friends expecting them to flank him, but Steve tells him that this is just between the two of them. Tommy replies that he doesn’t think so, because he doesn’t strike him as the type of guy who fights his own battles, but he is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in this instance. After lastly telling Steve to go back to his friends while he gets out of his hair, he takes his leave from the bar. Unfortunately, just as Tommy reaches his snowplow outside, Steve and his friends come out of the bar and give him a serious beating.

The bartender, Frank (John Carroll Lynch), finds Tommy soon after and brings him back inside, and though Tommy refuses Frank’s offer to notify the police, Frank calls Michael up and lets him know about the attack. The news quickly gets around to the rest of the people at the party, and all of the men leave moments later to go check on Tommy. When they get to the bar, they find Tommy slumped over in pain in one of the bar’s booths, and Michael and Stanley demand for Frank to tell them who did this to him. After Frank replies that it was Steve and his friends, Michael goes out to look for Steve in Tommy’s snowplow. Paul and Willie decide to go with him, but not before Paul orders Kev and Stanley to get Tommy to a hospital. When the three friends reach Steve’s house, Steve sees them and phones his friends for backup, and he answers the door when Michael starts pounding on it. As Michael roughs him up over what happened to Tommy, Steve’s friends appear in their car, but Willie keeps them from interfering by getting into the snowplow and using it to pin their car against a snowbank and trap them in it. Michael then makes ready to really put the hurt on Steve, but before he can do anything, Steve’s daughter suddenly appears at the door and asks her father what is going on. Unwilling to beat up Steve in front of his child, Michael leaves with his friends soon after, but not before Paul orders Steve to stay away from Tommy, him, and the rest of their friends. Darian then arrives home and sees the aftermath of the confrontation.

The trio then go to the hospital and meet up with Kev, Sarah, Stanley, Gina, and Tracy in the waiting room, but the five of them have yet to receive any news about Tommy’s condition. Moments later, Sharon emerges from the room that Tommy has been placed in, having been notified by Gina about what happened to him, and she tells everyone that Tommy suffered a concussion, two broken ribs, and needed 30 stitches to close his wounds, but he will be fine overall. Kev then leaves to go sand Tommy’s lots from the snowfall happening outside, and Willie tells everyone that he and Tracy will be returning to New York tomorrow. Later on, Tracy asks Willie why he wants to come back with her, and he informs her that he is going to take that salesman job that he was offered. However, Tracy convinces him NOT to take it because they both know that it is not for him. Meanwhile, Tommy and Sharon get to talking, and he tells her that he doesn’t know how he got to be the person that he has become, and he is not anywhere close to being the person that he thought that he would end up being and he doesn’t like that, and the person he wants to be has a woman who looks exactly like her. Overcome with emotion from the night’s events, Paul drives over to the residence of his ex-girlfriend, Jan (Martha Plimpton), and clears her driveway of snow rather than push it all up against her garage door out of spite like he usually does.

The next morning, Willie visits Tommy at the hospital to say goodbye to him before he heads back home. He finds Sharon sleeping next to him, and Tommy tells him that he intends to be a better boyfriend to her from now on. Michael then shows up with his two daughters to give their well wishes to Tommy, and Willie takes the opportunity to say goodbye to him as well. Back at Dick’s house, Willie and Tracy load their luggage into Tracy’s car and say farewell to Dick and Bobby, and Paul stops by soon after to also bid then both farewell, plus he lets Willie know that he found out that Jan is now engaged to another man, but he doesn’t mind it. Marty then comes out of her house to see Willie off, and Willie takes the opportunity to introduce her to Tracy. Willie then gives Marty a goodbye kiss on her right cheek before getting into the car with Tracy and beginning the long drive back to New York City.