My Girl 2

After kissing Macaulay Culkin (in My Girl) only to see him stung to death by killer bees, Pennsylvania waif Vada Sultenfuss (Chlumsky) takes her pubertal trauma to Los Angeles. Assigned to write a school essay on 'someone very special...someone you've never met', mortician's daughter Vada opts for another stiff: her mother, who expired shortly after giving birth. She lived in Los Angeles, but nobody (including super-rotund dad Aykroyd) can remember anything about her. Maybe amiable Uncle Phil (Masur) and his unwed partner Rose (Ebersole) can help. It's hard to pinpoint what's so grisly about this film. Zieff's direction is far from his worst, Janet Kovalcik's script side-steps the mawkish, Chlumsky has shed her moppet-mouthed ghastliness, and new boyfriend O'Brien is one up on Culkin. Perhaps it's that the obsession with death sits so uneasily against the young-love backdrop.