Mystic Pizza

The romantic and personal lives of the three waitresses intersect while working in a pizzeria in Mystic, Connecticut.

In the small Portuguese-American community that lives in the fishing town of Mystic, Connecticut, three young women, Jo, Daisy, and Kat, work at Mystic Pizza. Owned by Leona and her husband Vic, the local pizzeria is famous for the secret ingredients that Leona puts in the sauce.

Daisy and Kat Araújo are sisters. Daisy is the pretty one. Kat is the good one. They’re both friends with Josephina "JoJo" Barboza, the short one, who is getting married to Bill, a local lobsterman. But on the big day, the idea of getting married and having a family, the glimpse of the future awaiting her in this town, hits JoJo all at once and she is overcome. She faints at the altar, and in the aftermath, calls off the wedding.

JoJo may not be into the idea of getting married, but she is totally down with the idea of getting railed regularly by Bill while she mulls it over. Unfortunately, Bill breaks up with her because she won't commit, and also apparently doesn’t like enthusiastic blowjobs, I guess. Still, it’s clear they both love each other, and now Jojo is sad.

Kat is the younger of the two sisters. She is an aspiring astronomer, who’s been accepted to Yale on a scholarship. But it’s only a partial scholarship, so she needs money. So, in addition to waitressing at Mystic Pizza, and narrating the big show at the Mystic Seaport Whaling Museum‘s planetarium, Kat takes a job babysitting four-year-old Phoebe for her father Tim, a 30 year old obvious douchebag with big time 80s douchebag hair. Tim also went to Yale, and is now an architect, so while he's working on a house for a client, and his wife is working in England, Kat will be nannying. Kat quickly falls for Tim's bullshit, because she's a dumb child with a dumb child's ideas of romance, and Tim takes advantage of that and fucks her while "having a picnic" in a construction site, because Kat is obviously not a "dinner thing" for Tim.

Daisy, meanwhile, the older sister, is the wild party girl. At a local bar, she meets Charles, a rich kid whose family summers in Mystic, and beats him at pool as easily as she cock-blocks the pale waspy bird-woman that he had brought with him to the bar as his date. I don't remember what her name was, but I'm going to guess it was Blair. Anyway, Blair is never seen again, and Charles and Daisy are soon dating, despite their family’s objections, as wasps are the natural enemy of everything that aren't wasps, and anyone who isn't dickmatised or a dipshit recognizes that. Daisy doesn't want to believe this at first, but after being exposed to a wildly openly racist-against-the-Portuguese dinner with his family, she breaks up with him, accusing him of using her (Julia Roberts) as a Portuguese-American tool to rebel against his waspy bigot snob parents.

In short, the mere presense of boys has fully thrown these ladies' lives into complete dissarray. But when Tim’s wife returns from England, Tim rejects Kat, his eyes pleading with her to not say anything while his wife and child smile on nearby, the sisters reconcile, and the three friends come together again.

During all of this drama, the looming threat of a local television food critic, known as "The Fireside Gourmet," whose good reviews can make or break a restaurant, is ever present. Finally, he visits Mystic Pizza unexpectedly. He eats part of one pizza slice, jots some notes, pays, and leaves. It doesn’t look good, but then a few days later, when his latest show airs, he gives the restaurant his highest rating.

Huzzah!

In the end, JoJo marries Bill. The reception is held at Mystic Pizza. Leona gives Kat a loan for tuition, and Daisy and Charles reconcile. The film ends with the three friends overlooking the water from the restaurant's balcony, reminiscing about their good times together, and wondering not only about their futures, but what exactly Leona puts in the pizza sauce! Happy times!

The End.

Set very aggressively in the 1980s, when the times were incredibly innocent, incredibly naive, and incredibly prudish all at once, this is yet another film where all the young "teens" are dressed like they‘re going to a small town PTA meeting, unless they're going on a date, in which case, they're dressed like they're going to a small town prom. The film was filmed on location over six weeks in the fall of 1987 in the upper northeast of the country–cementing it as the real town’s entire reason for being for decades to come, with the actual Mystic Pizza even renovating itself to more closely resemble the film’s set–so this makes sense.

While admittedly, the film skips past a lot of the groundwork of earning its big cathartic moments (relying mostly on the audience understanding the expectations of the somewhat cliched character arcs, then filling in the blanks themselves), it does a mostly pretty decent job of following its three main characters through the various ups and downs of their different attempts at relationships. Mostly decent, if not in a—retroactively at least—somewhat chaste network tv kind of way.

And being that this film was made in the late 80s in America, mostly by men, it‘s undeniable and not at all surprising to see now that the entire thrust of this film is the idea that if you’re a woman, regardless of your dreams, you need to find a man or it's the end of your world. The three main characters are all young, of course, so it’s fair to excuse some of this as just being a naive perception of romance typical of kids, but still… watching it now, the craziest part is how at the time, this film was sincerely considered to be an example of ”female empowerment."

Under-seen when it was first released back in 1988, in his review, Roger Ebert wrote: "I have a feeling that Mystic Pizza may someday become known for the movie stars it showcased back before they became stars.“ And that is so true it’s practically prophetic. There’s Annabeth Gish and Lili Taylor, of course, and it’s also a strange experience to watch Vincent D’nofrio in this role as the hot young townie, while also watching him as the massive and brutish Kingpin in the latest season of Daredevil, but really, Mystic Pizza is the Julia Roberts show.

It’s a very young Julia Roberts too.

Just 21 years old in 1988, this is considered to be her first "major" film role. Her first film role was in the forgettable Blood Red, with her brother Eric, which was filmed in 1987, but since it was released in 1989, her first “released” film role was in February 1988 as Daryle Shane, the slutty bassist in the all-girl rock band, the Mystery, in the film Satisfaction, which starred the creepy washed-up anti-vaxxer shithead Nazi Trumper, Justine Bateman. Mystic Pizza was released just 9 months later in 1988, and she had a central role with more range, so it's considered to be her big “breakout” role. And it's with pretty good reason too, as Julia Robers then followed it up in quick succession with Steel Magnolias, Pretty Woman, Flatliners, and Sleeping With The Enemy over the course of the next two years... and she lived celebrity ever after.

Strangely less mentioned, is that this film also features a young Matt Damon. Mystic Pizza was his first movie role. At 18 years old, it was a small speaking part, where Damon played Charles’ younger brother in one single scene. His character’s name was apparently Steamer, which I assume is a common option among weirdo Upper East Coast Wasps? I don’t know. Anyway he delivered this line: "Mom, do you want my green stuff?" during dinner, and I think the main takeaway from this appearance is that Matt Damon was one weird looking little fucker at 18 years old. God damn Frankenstein head.

Watching Mystic Pizza now, two things stand out.

1. In 2019, it was announced that there was going to be a Mystic Pizza musical, and this is one of those things that never fails to make me laugh whenever I am reminded of it, because Mystic Pizza: The Musical was featured in an episode of 30 Rock long before Mystic Pizza: The Musical actually existed, during the 30 Rock version of the show, Jenna was required to eat 32 slices of pizza on stage every week. So, that was funny.
2. An episode of Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous is playing on the tv during the film, and as we were watching, I was about to say to my wife, “Hey, that’s Robin Leech, he’s in the Epstein Files, y’know.” But before I could, it turned out that the episode featured in this movie was actually the one about Mar-a-Lago, which Leech called “America’s number one home.” So, that was fucking gross.

In the end, rewatching Mystic Pizza nearly 40 years later reveals a film that is neither offensively out-of-date, nor all that progressive. It’s not bad, it’s not good. Like a lot of these kinds of 80s films, story-wise, it feels both incomplete and that it relies on a lot of implied plot points, and that, outside of its ”Future of Hollywood” cast, it’s otherwise mostly unremarkable. Your mileage, should you revisit this film, will probably depend mostly on how much you loved it back in 1988.