DE Special Projects Editor

Going to someone else’s class reunion, where you do not know anyone, may not be the criteria for a good time even for those who make the best out of any situation.

Beautiful Girls, set in a small fictitious Massachusetts town, brings audiences home to a group of gals and guys, and their 10-year class reunion. But the movie neglects to develop the characters and gives no insight into who these people once were. The movie only shows who they are now, and no in between on how they got there.

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So audiences get no real perceptions to the significance of the reunion of friends, and never really get to know these people, which makes the movie as dull as going to a class reunion with a bunch of people you do not know.

For example, Willie (Timothy Hutton) is a piano bar musician. But audiences only witness for a brief moment his life as a musician, then the film moves on. And more importantly, the film never tells us who he was in high school. It gives viewers no point of reference to compare his present life to.

All the film shows audiences is how he and his four friends view women and how each, slowly but surely, realizes it is time to seek real relationships with real women.

But what really kills this film is the short choppy episodes that make up most of the movie that do not necessarily relate to each other. Though some of them fit together, the film is still an unfinished puzzle with pieces in the wrong places.

It is the interaction of the great actors, such as Uma Thurman, Max Perlich, Matt Dillion and Hutton, that serves as one of the few bright spots in the film. The outstanding cast does a remarkable job of taking an average film and producing some sparks which saves this film from complete failure.

But do not be fooled by previews. Thurman’s part is not a huge one. Though she does give a good performance, her part is more of a cameo than a central role.

But poor, poor Timothy Hutton. His character starts out as a smooth suave character, but turns into somewhat of a creep who develops a platonic crush on a 13-year-old girl ( he is 27) because he admires her intelligence. He makes her upset, even on the verge of crying at one point.

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Matt Dillion plays Tommy, which is another typical Matt Dillion part, in which he portrays a middle class, less-than-genius male which we have seen many times before. But he does it so well that audiences will forgive him.

Two more of the friends Gina (Rosie O’Donnell) and Paul (Michael Rapaport), are both non-essential and obnoxious. Gina pops in every so often without warning, which makes one wonder were she has been and how she factors into the movie

In one instance, she tells Willie and Tommy how men think only in terms of breasts and butts. But nothing concrete is said previous to her speech that would provoke her outburst. And when she is finished she is gone again until much later in the movie.

But what is so disappointing is the class reunion, which brings all of these people together, is only shown briefly. The main characters are never together as group in the film. No real bond is created within the group as a the whole, even though audiences will suspect there is one underlying somewhere in the movie.

Girls does have a few bright spots. But it is not so much entertaining as it is enjoyably bearable. This film is hard to hate and hard to love, but falls easily somewhere in between. Don’t expect to be inspired, and don’t expect to see any Oscar nominations for the film. But most importantly don’t expect to see yourself running to the movie theater more than once to see this film.