SnoopyStyle It's 1963. Charlotte Flax (Winona Ryder) is a teen obsessed with Catholicism despite being Jewish. Her sister Kate (Christina Ricci) swims like a fish. She calls her mother Mrs. Flax (Cher). After yet another failed relationship with her married boss, Mrs. Flax randomly chooses coastal Eastport, Massachusetts and leaves Oklahoma. Charlotte falls for local handyman 26 year old Joe and overjoyed with the local convent. Meanwhile Mrs. Flax is courted by shoe store owner Lou Landsky (Bob Hoskins).It is a fine coming-of-age movie that concentrates heavily on the interior monologue of Charlotte. Her imaginative confused teenage mind lends itself to some comedy. It does need more and funnier jokes. It's more like a slice of quirky teenage observations. The movie needs some kind of end point or goal. Even if the goal is something fanciful like Charlotte wanting to be a saint or maybe simply wanting to be a nun.

Michael Neumann The challenge in watching this witless, would-be comedy isn't finding what went wrong; it's finding anything that goes right. The problems begin with an embarrassing script, loading every conceivable coming-of-age cliché on a set of characters overburdened with contrived eccentricities: Winona Ryder is a Jewish teen obsessed with Catholicism; younger sister Christina Ricci wants to swim the English Channel; and Cher is…well, simply Cher. The lame attempts at wacky humor, conveyed almost entirely through Ryder's superfluous voice-over narration (a sure sign of weak screen writing), are further undermined by Richard Benjamin's lackluster direction, and in answer the actors pitch their performances to the edge of hysteria (the otherwise reliable Bob Hoskins is especially irritating). Every tired convention of early '60s nostalgia (the music, the fashions, JFK's assassination) is dusted off and put on display, and every predictable crisis in the formula plot occurs right on cue.

Derek Carpet I walked into the cinema expecting this to be a film. I was right, but I thought it was going to be about women with tails swimming about the ocean, perhaps a sequel to The Little Mermaid. I was wrong. This is a film about a woman and her two daughters riding from town to town trying to get a break. Who cares. Who writes these things? Who watches these things? Seriously. Do you want to watch a film about a mummy shouting at her daughters and flirting with Bob Hopkins? No. Then they burst into a rendition of the Cheep Cheep song written by Dusky Springfield. It wasn't long before I fell asleep and dreamed a dream.I dreamt that I was a mermaid, or in this case a merman like in He-Man. I had a big 3-pronged fork which I used to catch my dinner- giant shrimp, octopussies, sea burgers etc. I wasn't the King or anything, but I was pretty well off as far as ocean dwellers go. I had a few concubines who would answer my every sordid whim. The main one looked like Winorda Rider so the film had some impact on me. One day I was relaxing on the ocean floor when a little lost boy swam round the rock shouting 'Kali Ma! Kali Maaa!' This disturbed me greatly so I gathered a group of my mates and went off to investigate. The source of the trouble was a giant dragon which had erupted from the ocean floor. We started to beat it with sticks and throw crabs at it but it laughed and turned into Les from Coronation Street. I was quite taken by surprise, and even more so when I looked down and saw that I was no longer a merman but a cup of tea sitting on a table on the set of Britain's most beloved soap. Vera had a suck of me, then Rita, then the ginger one, and Les dipped a digestive in me. Even now I feel his crumbs floating around my insides. All of a sudden Chair came running in singing the Woop Woop song, her and Bob Hostile dancing together, faster and faster. The youngest daughter from Mermaids (Lionel Ricci) came bounding in, tripped and banged into me. I tipped over the edge of the table and fell towards the carpet. Just before I hit the ground I woke up. The cinema was empty and the screen was blank. I realised I had slept over so decided to get up and go home for some sausages and whiskey.I noticed my watch (a Timex) had stopped. I walked out and found that no-one was around so I thought they were all in other screens, watching better movies. My footsteps seemed louder than usual, and there was an eerie quiet. An empty bag of minstrels rustled on the floor. Eager to put the whole episode behind me I made my way down the stairs and out they door. What greeted me I can only describe as silent carnage. Cars lay upturned on the streets, bikes and clothes lay strewn in the highest branches of the trees and on top of the lamp posts. Fires were burning all around, but in their dying stages. There was no wind. No sound. Everything seemed stale and artificial like a reality TV show commissioned by Channel 4. I had a feeling in my groin like some unknown force from centuries ago had taken residence there with no intention of leaving. The air had no taste but seemed like Polystyrene. Worse, there were no people. Shell shocked I stumbled across the street, still looking left and right for traffic even though the nearest car sat half in half out of the third storey of an office block behind me. I entered the corner shop looking for some fellow humans; not were to be found. Wait! Maybe some took shelter in the pub next door from whatever had happened here. What had happened? Terrorist? Aliens? Bomb? Earthquake? Act of God? I couldn't be sure, and my thoughts were not following logically anyway. Words bounced spontaneously about my head. Like. Unfocused. Wasps. Chasing. Jigsaw. Lullaby of descent into something something hell don't can't know no this isn't me here, why, why not whine aught? The pub was no less empty than the shop before. No-one anywhere. This was 4 days ago. I am home. I am alone. It's getting dark and I mostly get scared at night. Mostly. I haven't met another living soul in days. TV and radio are gone. Is there anybody out there? Let me know. I'll be at the town hall at midday everyday for an hour. I won't stay around for long though. I'm taking my bike down south to see if every town is the same. Head for the coast. Get a boat or swim if I must. Leave this place and find another way. Surely this can't be the only place. Please God.Best Bit: Taking all the DVDs from HMV now that everyone's gone.

Real_Girl Cher and Wynona Ryder are very believable as Mrs. and Charlotte Flax, respectively. Mrs. Flax is a single mom who lives by the motto "Real women never get too old." Her bright, bold, sexy ways make her a special woman but aren't enough to spare her from all the characteristic pains of single motherhood. Moving from town to town with every new relationship, she finds herself at odds her 15 year old daughter, Charlotte.Charlotte wants to be everything her mother isn't - pious, proper, humble, and pure. Her good intentions, however, are constantly in conflict with her basic nature, which is more like her mothers. Charlotte develops a fierce crush on Joe, the caretaker at a nearby convent. When Mrs. Flax's potentially serious relationship with the endearing Lou, played by Bob Hoskins, hits a rough patch, she too finds herself attracted to Joe. With competition for his affection to add fuel to the fire between Mrs. Flax and Charlotte, the only thing they can seem to agree on is caring for Katie, Charlotte's little sister, charmingly played by a young Christina Ricci. As things come to a head in the small town where the Flaxes are living, Katie's well-being hangs in the balance while both her mom and older sister try to work through their impulses.