Dina Pouros from ScoopSquare 24 is right, Now and Then does give us a serious case of nostalgia that seems best served by settling back and reminding ourselves of what it was like to be kids for a while. The movie is pretty simple in structure if complicated in feelings since it details the lives of a group of friends that are almost tight as sisters and tend to hang out with one another quite a bit, but obviously have their own issues that they’re dealing with in their lives. The one thing they have is each other though, and despite the regular issues that kids tend to have and think are all-important it’s shown that they all grow up to realize their own dreams and eventually come to realize that they’ve grown apart as tends to happen when life intervenes.
That’s the way of it though, isn’t it? Movies such as this remind us what it was like when we were kids, when we thought that our friends would be there for our entire lives, and that things would be fine no matter what because that best friend would always be at our side where we need them. Life tends to happen however, people grow up, they move away, and things change within the friendship, if it survives at all. It’s enough to say that the friendship felt between the four girls that serve as the main characters in the story is something that wasn’t expected, but might have still been thought about since it was an undoubted reality that they would all have to face up to eventually. If you’ve ever been through even half of what the characters in this movie have to go through then you might understand, or remember, what it was like to be a kid and think that the world you lived in was a place you could wonder about, but could also depend on to make sense when you really needed it to.
Obviously we find out differently as time goes on, and as the girls in this movie tend to find friendships do fade even if they don’t break entirely. While their own issues are paramount when they’re younger the issue of their friendship becomes something that eventually binds them together as the movie goes along. You’ve got to hand it to Netflix, they’ve been able to produce some of the best movies from the past and present that have allowed people to revisit the years that they might have allowed to slip from memory for a while. Simply going on the site you might eventually see one or two movies right away that you haven’t seen in a while, a call back to nostalgia that Netflix is happy to provide for a little while. This one in particular might hit the feels of a lot of people simply because of the nature that it covers in showing how four friends seem to try and extend their friendship as much as possible only to finally feel it succumb to time, distance, and of course, change.
Anne Cohen of Refinery 29 reminds us how a group of young actresses that weren’t quite so well-known yet as they are now came to remind us of what it means to have best friends, and how the bonds we form tend to shift over time. That’s the nature of being friends though, even if people remain close the friendship will change and things won’t be the same as they were during childhood. It’s inevitable really, the idea of growing up and taking on different interests. Some friends are lucky enough to stay close and share in a host of different experiences, keeping their friends close in order to maintain that level of personal, emotional security that so many people prize and so many others tend to let slip through their fingers as they go off to grow up and become someone that might not recognize that need for friendship any longer. The pleasing thing is that a lot of people still pine for this type of connection even if they don’t know it or admit it. The need to keep close to people you were comfortable with becomes a driving, burgeoning need once you know that they still have that same drive to connect, and in some cases it becomes the only real link that matters since it’s the one thing that remains from the friendship that can possibly make it work.
Now and Then was a movie that was designed to give us a big hit in the feels and remind us all that friendship is always bound to change but is still extremely important since it binds those that are willing to put in the work and the effort to make it into something that is more than just being chummy, more than being a good pal. Real friendship is something that lasts for decades and longer if possible, since it’s a connection that we make that many tend to keep for a lifetime.
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