My Girl 2
Set nearly two years after the first film, in the spring of 1974, Vada Sultenfuss (Chlumsky) sets out on a quest to learn more about her deceased biological mother. She has matured over the past year and a half (since the first film), going from the spunky, eleven-year-old hypochondriac to a lively, yet more serious teenager seeking independence. Her father, Harry (Aykroyd), has since married Shelly DeVoto (Curtis), whom he dated in the first film; and they are expecting a baby. They still live in the Sultenfuss' funeral home in Madison, Pennsylvania, while her Uncle Phil (Masur) has moved to Los Angeles, where he now works as a mechanic. Gramoo, Vada's grandmother, has since died; and she still wears the mood ring that her late best friend Thomas J. died while retrieving it for her.
To accommodate the new baby, Vada moves out of her bedroom and into Gramoo's old room, which has been renovated, and it brings further problems with adjustment. Vada even thinks about getting her own apartment while spending a night out with her father.
Vada is given a school assignment to write an essay on someone she admires but has never met. She decides to write about her mother but has few sources to go on, which are all confined in a small box. Among its contents are programs of plays her mother was in (she was an aspiring actress), a passport, and a mystery paper bag with a date scribbled on it. Vada expresses her desire to travel someday, so Shelly concocts a plan for her to travel to Los Angeles during her spring break, where she can stay with her Uncle Phil and do research on her mother, who lived in L.A. growing up. Harry does not go along with the idea, believing Vada is too young to be traveling by herself, and fearing what might happen to her in Los Angeles. Eventually, he lets her take the five-day trip.
On arriving in L.A., Vada finds herself confronting a boy her age named Nick (O'Brien), who comes to pick her up at the airport instead of Uncle Phil. Nick is the son of Uncle Phil's girlfriend Rose (Ebersole), and he is asked to show Vada around the city. While annoyed at first about sacrificing his own spring break, he helps Vada with the difficult search of learning more about her mother. Their relationship, which starts out reluctantly, gradually grows stronger.
Vada and Nick meet several people who knew her mother. Some of the things she finds out don't sit well with her, such as her mother being suspended from school for smoking. Two of these acquaintances have a look at that paper bag from Vada's small box of memories about her mother, but neither can decipher it. When another blurts out the name Jeffrey Pommeroy, thinking that he is Vada's father but of course isn't; Vada is crushed, and wonders why her father never mentioned this person. Eventually, but with some hesitation, she goes to see Jeffrey (John David Souther), her mother's first husband. He provides Vada with valuable information to help with her assignment, including home movies and the answer behind the date written on the paper bag. An a cappella rendition of the Charlie Chaplin song "Smile" appears in the home movies, sung by her mother (Angeline Ball).
Meanwhile, Uncle Phil is trying to prove his love to Rose, after a man who owns a fancy car that supposedly needs many tune-ups tries to sweep her away. When Uncle Phil gets the courage to show what she means to him, he proposes.
As Vada is about to return home, she and Nick share a final moment at the airport, ending in a kiss. Also, she receives earrings from him as a gift (she gets her ears pierced while in L.A., even though Nick is against the "barbaric custom"). When she returns home, she realizes Shelly had just had a baby boy, who has a crying spell. As Vada holds him, she sings "Smile" to her new half-brother to calm him, the same song she heard her mother singing in the home movies. Her essay on her mother gets an A+.
A brief scene where Nick sees Vada wearing a mood ring, which has ties to her late friend, Thomas J., also appears in the movie for continuity.
home movie