Okay, here's the deal. There is an evil among us, people. It starts about this time every year, and lasts for almost two months. Waiting for its arrival becomes a never-ending nightmare of dread. You can try to ignore it, but it will still come. You can refuse to admit it, but it will still come. You might even be lucky enough to forget about it altogether, but it will come.

It will start simply enough. You go out to your mailbox, grab your mail, and begin sorting through it as you walk back in the house. Then, you notice an envelope with a return address you don't recognize right off. The envelope is addressed to you, but, out beside your name, there is a number, a two digit number that you vaguely remember as having some significance.

You open the envelope, and you are faced with a Xeroxed questionaire. Along the top of the page, it says, "Hello, Old High School Friend!"

And you are caught in the sticky web that is your impending high school reunion. And, like everyone, you panic. You gotta lose weight, you gotta buy a new outfit, you gotta get a life, the usual anxieties. And you are forced to realize that your life, like everyone else's, did not turn out the way you'd hoped it would in high school.

I mean, look at me. In a perfect world, I'd be the first baseman for the Atlanta Braves, batting .374 with 44 homers a year and spending my off-hours running a major movie studio.

Hollywood has seen fit to chuck us a couple of high school reunion movies within the space of six weeks. But, unlike the "Volcano-Dante's Peak" syndrome, neither of these movies was a high-profile cashcow. Instead, Grosse Pointe Blank snuck in and turned out to be a good little movie lost in the blinding snow of Jedi Knights. It'll probably fare better during its winter video run.

And, friends and neighbors, the other reunion movie, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, is out now, and this one gets to keep its head above the lava flow and all I can say is, "Thank the Lord for stack heels." 'Cause Romy and Michele is a pretty good movie its ownself.

The title girls are escapees from Tuscon, living in L. A. and loving their one-dimensional lives. They go to work (well, one goes to work), and spend the nights club-hopping. Who could ask for anything more? Well, when the questionaire gets to their mailbox, they start asking themselves for more. Lots more.

Oscar®-winner Mira Sorvino and "Friends" friend Lisa Kudrow play the respective girls, and they play them well. Their characters are basically the two girls from Clueless grown up, but Sorvino and Kudrow get more meat off the bone than the Batgirl-to-be. Kudrow is basically extending her "Friends" character (heretofore known as Matthew Perry-itis), but she gets a chance or two to say something poignant rather than ditzy.

The girls plan to go to their reunion and live a lie that they are successful inventors and are living the life of Riley out on the Left Coast. They get jazzy clothes, a jazzy ride, and, with their jazzy lie, go back to Tuscon to show the world that they aren't losers after all.

If you pass this film by because it's "just like Grosse Pointe Blank," then you're making a major mistake. The reunion is only a backdrop for Grosse. Here, though, the reunion is the focus. This film shows all the anxieties that surround this so-called happy time. All of the "keeping up with the Jones" attitudes come to full throttle here, and, yes, it can be an incredibly painful time if you are less than confident in yourself.

That's where Sorvino comes into play in the biggest way. She's a primo actress. She can play emotion on her face better than most people in the business. She's a pretty girl, with great eyes and a wonderful smile, capable of playing for laughs with the spoken word, but she can break your heart with a lip quiver and a brief lookaway. She proved this in the HBO movie Norma Jean and Marylin, and she proves it again here.

And, best of all is Janeane Garafalo. This girl is quickly becoming one of the best comedic actresses in LaLaLand, folks. If you saw her in The Truth About Cats And Dogs, you saw how she can play tender, more Meg Ryan-esque type comedy. Here, though, we get the humor that's closer to her stand-up posture. Attitude, anger. She can deliver a putdown with G-force venom, and her deadpan laugh is as coarse as the conga line in a German disco. Catch Janeane in a movie called Bye Bye Love if you want to see her steal a movie in a matter of nanoseconds.

The script by Robin Schiff, based on her play Ladies Room, is a little draggy at times, and probably could've done with a little tightening up, and director David Mirkin doesn't threaten Steven Speilberg by any stretch of the imagination. They still manage, though, to turn out a movie that causes a flood of memories.

And, speaking of memories, thanks should go out to Steve Bartek for piecing together a boffo soundtrack. It's a compilation of '80s music that sent shivers up my spine. That music was the music of my college days, not high school. But when I heard those tunes again, I was flipped back in time, having the time of my life, abusing my liver to the fullest. And, an additional thank you goes out to choreographer Smith Wordes for putting together two of the best dance sequences to hit the screen in years.

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion is no classic. In truth, it may be an aged Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but it's a light piece of fluff that's easy to drift with, stirring up old memories of those glorious '80s and how silly and stupid we all were back then. And still are, come to think of it.