Browsing Through Time with Peggy Sue

If you could go travel back to a crucial time in your past and alter the trajectory of your life, what would you change? Is it possible to change one’s fate and destiny? This is the theme of Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) starring Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage.

A change of pace for director Coppola after his epic blockbuster hits The Godfather and Godfather II and the lushly produced but disappointing version of The Outsiders, Peggy Sue is a wistful yet comedic film with an odd charm and metaphysical underpinnings. Here, Coppola assembles a powerhouse cast for a seriocomic and bittersweet film that’s as much about about unresolved issues and dreams that don’t come true as it is about time travel.

On the eve of her divorce from straying husband Charlie (Cage), Peggy Sue attends her 25-year high school reunion, where she suddenly collapses, waking up in the same high school gym in 1960, 25 years earlier.

Kathleen Turner in the title role

“I have come here from 25 years in the future,” Peggy Sue confides in Richard Norvick, the class genius who has become a world-famous inventor by the time of the reunion, played by Barry Miller (memorable as the troubled guy from Saturday Night Fever who falls from the Brooklyn Bridge). Richard shares his own theory of time—Richard’s Burrito, where two ends of space/time time fold in upon themselves and “you can fill it with anything you like.”

When she made Peggy Sue, Kathleen Turner was one of the biggest names in the movies, with a string of hits including Body Heat, Romancing the Stone and Prizzi’s Honor. After her box office mojo cooled, Turner would conquer the Broadway stage and then settle into quirky character roles on film and TV, including a brilliant turn in the John Waters black comedy Serial Mom—another Turner title role.

Peggy and Richard (Barry Miller)

As Peggy Sue Kelcher Bodell, Kathleen Turner has one of her most multidimensional roles, as she must retrace the steps of her teenage life, seeing it now through the eyes of an adult. 

She sees that her soft-spoken mother (a lovely performance by Barbara Harris of Nashville, Freaky Friday and Family Plot fame), with her familiar scent of Chanel #5, is actually an iron butterfly who holds the family together in spite of her sweet and amiable but ne’er do well failure of a husband (Don Murray from Bus Stop and Endless Love). Peggy’s mother warns her not to grow up too fast—and get trapped by man. “Do you know what a penis is, Peggy?” she  asks pointedly. “Stay away from it!”

In spite of herself, Peggy finds herself falling in love with high school sweetheart Charlie all over again, even while telling him, “I’m not crazy enough to marry you twice.” She turns the tables on him and pressures him to make love to her in a parked car in a reversal of 1950s sexual stereotypes.

Nicolas Cage as Charlie, with Jim Carrey, Glenn Withrow and Harry Basil

Charlie is afraid he’ll grow up to be just like his father, selling appliances and chasing women around the store—which is exactly how his life will play out. His long-shot of a dream of becoming a pop star earns him the nickname of “Treble without a Cause,” and Peggy gives him a Beatles song from four years in the future, hoping he can make a success of it, but he changes the lyrics (‘She Loves You - Oooh Ooh Oooh’). “I’ve got the hair, I’ve got the voice, I’ve got the car. I’m gonna be just like Fabian,” he wails. But it is not to be.

As Charlie Bodell, Nicolas Cage, nephew of director Coppola, is either adorable or annoying, depending upon your point of view. He affects a comedically nasal, adenoidal voice that brings to mind a bad impression of Marlon Brando, but in my opinion, the character is quite endearing, sweet and guileless. Cage’s performance is soulful and engaging; as quirky and charismatic in its way as his upcoming role opposite Cher in Moonstruck. 

Peggy is a little rusty at cheerleading practice.

Peggy Sue’s grandparents, beautifully played by Maureen O’Sullivan (the original Jane from the Weissmuller Tarzan movies and Mia Farrow’s mother) and Leon Ames (Judy Garland’s stern but loving father in Meet Me in St. Louis) believe Peggy’s story, revealing their belief in the reincarnation, the paranormal and psychic phenomenon. In fact, Peggy’s grandfather takes her to his masonic lodge meeting, where they conduct a weird ritual to send her back to her own timeframe, replete with a harpist’s rendition of “Beautiful Dreamer” and legendary classic film actor John Carradine (The Ten Commandments) performing the ceremony.

Catherine Hicks and Joan Allen

Suffusing the entire film is an air of melancholy, and between the laughs you’ll find a few moments that may bring a lump to the throat: Peggy “remembering the future,” missing her unborn children; reuniting with her obnoxious sister who obviously had died young, played by Coppola’s daughter Sofia (later to find her own niche as a director rather than actor). When Peggy returns to her own time, it is discovered that her near-death experience was due to an attack of tachycardia, and paramedics had to restart her heart.

Somewhat of a cross between Grease and blockbuster time-travel hit Back To The Future (made the previous year), Coppola's Peggy Sue effectively evokes the period with the music (including “Tequila” by The Champs and “I Wonder Why” by Dion and the Belmonts) cars (“Dad bought an Edsel!”)  and fashions of the day (designed by Theodora Van Runkle). 

Soulmates through time—Charlie and Peggy: "Is, was and always will be."

Viewed today, the film is nostalgic in other ways, too, as we see a few of the cast who went on to greater fame after this film: Jim Carrey before he rocketed to superstar status;  multiple Oscar nominee Joan Allen (The Crucible, The Contender); comedian Wil Shriner; Catherine Hicks (7th Heaven, Marilyn: The Untold Story), and a young Helen Hunt (As Good As It Gets) as Peggy’s teenage daughter.

Is time travel possible? That’s always a very interesting question. Peggy Sue Got Married is an entertaining exploration of that timeless theme.

This is an entry in the It's In The Name of the Title Blogathon hosted by RealWeegiemidget Reviews and Taking Up Room. I look forward to reading them all.