by John Coctostone With Culkin gone, Anna Chlumsky is left to carry the film, and her modest charms just aren't up to the task. She's cute and has a fairly natural delivery, but she just doesn't command your attention. And in a movie as flimsy as My Girl 2, there has to be some kind of distraction. The only other actors with screen presence in the film are Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis. Aykroyd is making the switch from comic leading man to character actor gracefully, and Curtis has her loopy sexuality working in overdrive, even though her character is nine months pregnant. Unfortunately, both are dispatched quickly as Chlumsky's Vada Sultenfuss (say that five times fast) leaves their home in rural Pennsylvania to find more about her long-dead mother. The setting abruptly shifts to mid-'70s Southern California, where Vada crashes with her swinger uncle Phil (Richard Masur), his girlfriend Rose (Christine Ebersole), and her son Nick (Austin O'Brien). Nick gets roped into showing Vada the Hollywood sights, including Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the La Brea Tarpits, and a movie studio backlot. The problem is, My Girl 2 was filmed in Florida, not California, and the bulk of the location shots look extremely phony. Then again, the entire movie is fairly synthetic. Director Howard Zieff tries to recreate the magic between Chlumsky and Culkin by substituting O'Brien (Last Action Hero), but there's no chemistry between them. One of the movie's themes is that Vada is beginning to learn about her sexuality, but there was more romance in the quick kiss between Chlumsky and Culkin in the first film than in any of her long smooches with O'Brien. The original My Girl didn't have much of a reason for being, but at least it had Culkin and Aykroyd and Curtis (in bigger roles) to make it moderately amusing. Without those talents at the film's center, My Girl 2 is just an exercise in futility.
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