Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Vada Sultenfuss has a holiday coming up, and an assignment: to do an essay on someone she admires and has never met. She decides she wants to do an assignment on her mother, but quickly realises she knows very little about her. She manages to get her father to agree to let her go to LA to stay with her Uncle Phil and do some research on her mother.
My Girl 2 is a mild, agreeable family sequel that retreads familiar emotional ground without recapturing the original's poignancy. The plot premise—researching a deceased mother through a road-trip to LA—is serviceable but thin, leaning heavily on nostalgia for the first film rather than generating genuine dramatic stakes. The young cast performs capably, with Anna Chlumsky showing natural charm, and the adult supporting players provide warmth. Cinematography is functional and unremarkable, typical of early-90s family productions. As a sequel, it offers little that's distinctive or surprising—it recycles the coming-of-age and grief themes of the original in a more formulaic package. The ending is modestly satisfying, giving Vada a sense of connection to her mother and some emotional closure, but it lacks the impact of the first film's conclusion.