Kathy Bates and the late Jessica Tandy star in Fried Green Tomatoes, a wonderfully surprising film about four strong women finding friendship, loyalty, and strength in each other. Sounds boring, right? I thought so, too, until I actually sat down and gave the extended anniversary edition a chance. The film, based on Fannie Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, is really two stories in one. Bates plays an unhappy Southern woman stuck in a marriage routine, which doesn't favor her n...eds at all. She is underappreciated, despite her calm, sweet demeanor, and routinely thrown out of her husband's aunt's room at the nursing home. It's during one of these rejections that she meets Nanny Threadgoode (Tandy), a positive old woman determined to get her house back, and eager for the chance to talk about her past.

But it isn't her own life that Nanny wants to tell her new friend about - it's the friendship of two women, Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker), whom Nanny used to know, that gets the old woman talking. Be forewarned. There are some hanky moments, but they're all handled with great care. Also, the racial elements of the backstory and an intriguing murder mystery amp up the drama to a reasonably tense and captivating level. Director Jon Avnet keeps the film from ever getting too hoky or melodramatic, though I will say it can't escape predictability. There are some pseudo-surprises you should see coming from a mile away, and even a touch of morbidity toward the film's conclusion. But it all works, thanks in large part to great source material, a strongly adapted script, and the amazing performances of all four women.