My Girl 2 (1994)
(On Cable TV, June 2020) The success of My Girl made a sequel inevitable, but how exactly do you produce a sequel to a movie famous for an out-of-left-field slap of emotional manipulation? You can’t exactly kill a new best friend. So, the sequel digs deeper in its mythology and goes foreign (so to speak), in sending our young protagonist from the Midwest to sunny Los Angeles in a quest to find out more about her deceased mom. There’s a surprise marriage here, and a new baby, and some step-cousin romance and a few more things out of the “thirteen-year-old girl’s best summer ever” playbook. On its own, My Girl 2 works modestly well in the Hollywood teen-drama mould—but as a sequel, though, it plays more as an extended epilogue or another more boring chapter in the character’s lives. It’s not unpleasant, but it’s definitely the kind of film that can play in the background while you’re doing something else.