
A funny and moving family film!
Plot outline
Personal notes
Cast
- Dan Aykroyd
- Jamie Lee Curtis
- Macaulay Culkin
- Anna Chlumsky
- Richard Masur
- Griffin Dunne
- Ann Nelson
- Peter Michael Goetz
- Jane Hallaren
- Anthony R. Jones
- Tom Villard
- Lara Steinick
- Kristian Truelsen
- David Caprita
- Jody Wilson
- Linda Perri
- Nancy L. Chlumsky
- Glenda Chism
- Bill Cordell
- Ray Buktenica
- George Colangelo
- Anthony Finazzo
- Shane Obedzinski
- Zachary McLemore
- T.J. Collazo
- Cassi Abel
- Amanda Cole
- Bree Butler
- Harvey Bellman
- John DeRussy
- Henry Kohn
- Florence Mistrot
- Anthony Giaimo
- Edgar Allan Poe IV
- Robert V. Girolami
- Kurt Smildsin
- Paul Nagle Jr.
- Lynn Sellers
- Blair Barnette
- Sven Granlund
- Victor Iemolo
- Kevin Scott Richardson
- L.A. Rothman
Plots
A young girl, on the threshold of her teen years, finds her life turning upside down, when she is accompanied by an unlikely friend.
1972. Vada Sultenfuss (played by Anna Chlumsky) is an intelligent, bubbly, hypochondriacal 11-year old girl. Her father, Harry (Dan Aykroyd), is a mortician and a widower. Her best friend is Thomas J Sennett (Macaulay Culkin). Then her father hires a new receptionist, Shelly (Jamie Lee Curtis), and life will never be the same again.
Having lost her mother in birth and with her whole life encircled by death, Vada Sultenfuss, the gloomy 11-year-old daughter of Harry Sultenfuss, the town's funeral parlour manager, it is no wonder that death became almost an obsession to her. In addition, Vada has no friends in school, she is a hypochondriac tomboy, her grandmother has Alzheimer's, and worst of all, her best friend is Thomas J. Sennett, another unpopular kid who is allergic to just about everything. During the summer break in 1972, Vada will have her first crush, she will join a poetry writing class, but most of all, when the cheerful and quirky Shelly DeVoto takes up the position of make-up artist at Harry's mortuary, she will gradually find the maternal figure she always needed. Far too much for a girl to handle..