Film

Now and Then

Name: Now and Then
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Released: 1995
Cast: Christina Ricci, Rosie O'Donnell, Thora Birch, Melanie Griffith, Gaby Hoffmann

Now and Then is a wistful ensemble memory piece: four women, reuniting as adults, drop back into the electric, hormonal chaos of the summer they were twelve. It's soft-focus nostalgia with real teeth — ghost stories, funerals, first kisses, a body under a tree — carried by an unusually starry young cast. Watch it for the warmth of growing up alongside your best friends, not for narrative rigor.

TMDb rating

6.9

If you liked this

Stand by Me1986

The same story, structurally: a foursome of kids winding through one charged summer with a body somewhere at the center, adults narrating their own youth from a wiser distance. Rob Reiner does it first and does it beautifully.

But All boys, all bikes and swearing, none of the specifically female texture — if that's what drew you to Now and Then, this trades it for something else entirely.

Fried Green Tomatoes1991

Another dual-timeline friendship story — one woman remembering another across decades, Southern heat, secrets buried literally and figuratively, a bond so intense it reorders someone's whole life.

But Heavier and sadder than Now and Then ever gets — it earns its tears the hard way, with real violence lurking under the comedy.

Beaches1988

Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey carry a friendship from childhood through marriages, careers and grief; it's the tearjerker Now and Then only flirts with, unapologetically big and sentimental.

But It goes for the throat emotionally in its back half — pack tissues, and don't expect the gentleness of a summer memory.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

My Brilliant Friend2018

Same premise stripped of the gloss — adult women narrating their way back to a formative childhood friendship — but told as serious literary drama in another language and format entirely.

Two women, looking back from old age, circle through a lifelong and ferocious friendship that began as girls in postwar Naples — same bones as Now and Then, slowed down and taken devastatingly seriously.

But It's a multi-season commitment in Italian with subtitles, and it trades warm nostalgia for something much darker and more painful.

Steel Magnolias1989

A different life stage — grown women in a small-town beauty parlor — but the same DNA: sharp, funny female friendship that turns serious without warning, played by a killer ensemble having a great time.

But No childhood nostalgia at all; it's about adult women's friendships, so the bikes-and-summer charm of Now and Then is entirely absent.

Little Women1994

Four girls growing up together, fierce loyalty, first losses, and the pain of realizing you can't keep the group exactly as it was — same emotional throughline, dressed in petticoats.

But Nineteenth-century New England instead of 1970s small-town America; if it's the specific decade nostalgia you loved, this won't scratch that itch.

My Girl1991

Same era, same tomboyish heroine on the cusp of something, same mix of comedy and real grief blindsiding you mid-summer — Anna Chlumsky is basically Roberta's spiritual cousin.

But It centers on one girl rather than a foursome, and the ending hits considerably harder than anything in Now and Then.

The Baby-Sitters Club1995no page yet

Released the same year, aimed at the same audience, with an almost identical premise — a tight girl-gang facing the small dramas and betrayals of adolescence with loyalty as the engine.

But Lighter and glossier, made for a younger audience, without the wistful adult framing device that gives Now and Then its ache.

The Sandlot1993

The boy-gang answer to the same nostalgic itch — one perfect, mythic childhood summer, told with such warm hindsight you'll want to go find your own old gang immediately.

But Broader and gentler, aimed squarely at kids, with none of the puberty-and-mortality undercurrent that gives Now and Then its edge.

The Wonder Years1988

An adult narrator looking back on the same turbulent stretch of growing up, same small-town Americana, same collision of comedy and sudden sadness — just stretched over six seasons instead of one summer.

But It's a boy's coming-of-age told through a male gaze across years, not a single hot, electric summer with a group of girls.

The Member of the Wedding1952no page yet

This is the template decades before Now and Then existed: the same tomboy-girl-on-the-cusp-of-puberty ache, the same static Southern summer, the same sense of a childhood world about to close for good.

A tomboyish twelve-year-old, desperate to belong to something bigger than herself, aches through one restless summer in the Deep South — Julie Harris's performance is the ancestor of every 'girl on the edge of growing up' role that followed.

But Black-and-white and stage-bound by modern standards, it moves slowly and talks more than it shows.

It2017

Same engine — a tight-knit childhood gang, a secret from the town's past, a summer that becomes a rite of passage — reworked as full-blown horror instead of nostalgic drama.

Swap the ghost story for an actual monster and you get the same structure — a gang of kids bound by loyalty, spending one charged season uncovering something buried and terrible in their own town.

But It's a horror film with real scares and gore; if you came to Now and Then for gentleness, this replaces it with genuine dread.