Murder, Domestic Abuse, and Alabama during the Great Depression. This doesn’t really set the stage for a typical “chick flick,” and many people would consider it to be one, but really, I don’t!

Fried Green Tomatoes is one of my all-time favorite movies. It depicts the hardship and love of the closest of friends going through rough times during the Great Depression in the deep South, and a common bond so strong they’d kill for each other…or would they?

There is such a feeling of mystery in the air during the whole film, and even though the viewer eventually gets clued-in on the truth behind the mystery, it leaves the viewer, still, with a sort of empty and yearning feeling. But really it’s just because the film ends even if you don’t want it to.

The movie opens with Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates) and her husband Ed (Gilliard Sartain) looking for the nursing home where Ed’s mother is residing. They get lost after making a wrong turn and find themselves in the middle of a ghost town: dilapidated old structures, unused rail line, yet somehow they find a phone booth that still functions. Eventually they get to the Home and Evelyn, who battles a weight problem, sits in the waiting room downing candy bar after candy bar when she is accosted by a sweet old lady in a house dress and thinning hair. This woman turns out to be Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy), a former resident of the ghost town the Couches had just passed through. She regales Evelyn with stories about her past, and Evelyn couldn’t be more uninterested until…”Idgie and her friend Ruth ran the Whistle Stop Cafe. Idgie was a character, all right. But how anybody could have thought she murdered that man is beyond me.”

In the typical Hollywood-in-the-90′s fashion, the film setting flashes back to the hay day of Whistle Stop, Alabama, and chronicles the circumstances surrounding the best friendship of Idgie Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Ruth Jamison (Mary Louise Parker) that parallels the relationship that blossoms between Evelyn and Ninny. It details their life through the Whistle Stop Cafe, which they owned and worked, and the characters that come and go and the trial for the murder of a Georgia man, Frank Bennett (Nick Searcy). Racism is prevalent throughout the film, and the love of the core group of characters extends to the “colored” people who helped to raise Idgie, Big George (Stan Shaw), and his mother, Sipsey (Cicely Tyson). The dynamic relationships between all of the characters is what pulls the whole movie together, particularly during the murder trial.

This movie is full of hilarious one-liners and quotes, and all of the actors do incredible work throughout. This isn’t just some easily-missed movie from the past…it’ll suck you in from the moment the music starts in the beginning with the slow drawl of the deep South and the weeping tones of the hardworking African American culture during the height of segregation and hard, back-breaking work. I fully recommend this film to anyone, especially if you have an interest in history as even though it’s not a true story, it’s a believable tale. Fannie Flagg co-wrote the screenplay after her book, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which is also worth a read and adds even more depth to the story.

Just remember: “The secret’s in the sauce…”

(And as an aside, even though it sounds disgusting, fried green tomatoes are really good!)