An Ode to the La Brea Tar Pits Scene in 'My Girl 2'
The agony and the ecstasy of a lost mood ring amid the mammoths
In the pantheon of ‘90s family films, My Girl 2 has mostly been forgotten. It lacks the nostalgic milestones of first kisses and first periods, and the horrific sight of the beestung corpse of Macaulay Culkin as Anna Chlumsky wails, “He can’t see without his glasses!!”
The 1994 sequel, greenlit after the original 1991 film made around $60 million against a $17 million budget, is not by most metrics a *good* movie. Because they killed Macaulay’s character off at the end of the first film, it doesn’t have his star power or any real reason for existing.
But My Girl 2 does have something the original does not: a hormonally charged trip to the La Brea Tar Pits.
Directed by Howard Zieff (who also directed the first My Girl and Private Benjamin), the sequel revolves around a now 13-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (Chlumsky) discovering more about her deceased mom and herself in Los Angeles, where she’s been shipped by Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis to spend the summer with her Uncle Phil. But, mainly, Vada has a tween-age dalliance with a boy named Nick, played by Austin O’Brien, aka Logan Bruno in The Baby-Sitters Club Movie.
At some point during Vada and Nick’s movie-length trek around L.A., they make a stop at the La Brea Tar Pits, an active paleontological site in the middle of the city which, as its name suggests, features bubbling pits of tar.
When I first watched My Girl 2 as a child, I thought the La Brea Tar Pits scene represented the height of the human experience. It’s not even three minutes long, yet it packs in the thrill of sightseeing at a glamorous yet educational location, ‘70s fashion, discussions of death, a flirtatious fight with a floppy haired boy, and a nearly devastating ending.
“Be careful. It has a lot of sentimental value,” Vada ominously warns Nick as she lets him try on her mood ring. Being a 13-year-old boy, Nick promptly pretends to drop the ring in the tar pits, leading Vada to fully freak out and think she’s lost the only thing she has to remember Thomas J. (Macaulay Culkin) by. The drama! The emotion!
The full significance of Vada’s mood ring is pretty bleak: She lost it in the woods during the first film, and Thomas J. had returned to look for it when he was swarmed by the bees that killed him. Perhaps that ring should have been thrown in the tar and lost forever.
As far as filming locations go, the La Brea Tar Pits is unexpectedly cinematic. The museum and viewing areas weren’t actually completed until 1977, but the museum’s brutalist architecture makes for a stunning backdrop to emphasize how tiny these two kids are in the grand scheme of the universe. And the My Girl franchise’s overt themes of death are really driven home as Vada and Nick gaze out over the sun-dappled, fiber glass models of prehistoric dying animals.
(I was slightly devastated to learn while writing this that the site is currently undergoing a massive redesign, and the ill-fated mammoth statues may be relocated in the name of historical accuracy.)
My Girl 2 turned 30 this month with zero fanfare. But when I visited the La Brea Tar Pits a few years ago, they were selling mood rings in the gift shop. I can’t think of any other valid reason why this place would be selling a variety of cheap mood rings alongside sabertooth tiger ornaments and wooly mammoth keychains, except that My Girl 2’s legacy lives on.
I bought one, of course.
Such an underrated sequel…. I know the podcast Unloved Sequels are coving it this month and - The Academy museum of motion picture did a screening of My Girl 2 in 35mm on the 3rd August
This is such lovely article. I was sad to find that the location used in the movie no longer exists - it was a viewing platform/restroom building next to the the largest lake pit. It appears to have been demolished in the 90s. Thankfully the museum in the background is still around.