Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael (1990)

WELCOME HOME, ROXY CARMICHAEL  (1990) 
    D: Jim Abrahams                                                  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    Winona Ryder, Jeff Daniels, Frances Fisher,
    Laila Robins, Thomas Wilson Brown, Graham Beckel
Clyde, Ohio, is a dot-on-the-map town west of Cleveland, where, according to this movie, everybody's emotional development stalls out at about age 15. There really is a Clyde, Ohio, and whether the people there are all small-minded and shallow, I couldn't say, but that's the way the film portrays them. The story has the good citizens of Clyde making much civic ado over the imminent return of one Roxy Carmichael, a girl who escaped as a teenager 15 years before, vowing not to come back till she was famous. Now she is, mainly because somebody wrote a hit song about her, and her reputation in Clyde has reached the level of myth. Everybody's affected by it. Jeff Daniels plays Roxy's old boyfriend, now married with a couple of kids. Winona Ryder plays the high-school outcast who believes she's Roxy's daughter. Laila Robins plays a sympathetic guidance counselor, and there are a couple of sweet scenes between Ryder and Thomas Wilson Brown as the schoolmate who's not-so-secretly crazy about her. The other actors, with minor variations, are stuck playing all those emotional 15-year-olds. That's deliberate, apparently, like the stereotyping you'd find in a fairy tale, but outside of movies and fairy tales, not everybody's like that. They can't be. Not even in Clyde, Ohio.