PG-13 | 2h 10m | Comedy, Drama | 2026
“Fried Green Tomatoes” returns to theaters for its 35th anniversary on May 10, 2026, with additional screenings on May 13, as part of Fathom’s Big Screen Classics series.
Similar to “Driving Miss Daisy” (also starring Jessica Tandy) and “Steel Magnolias,” “Tomatoes” is a Southern-fried reminiscence tale. In it, the elderly Ninny Threadgoode (Tandy) tells her family history to one Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates), about Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker). Idgie and Ruth were an engaging pair of spirited young women running a little place called the Whistle Stop Cafe in Alabama, in the 1930s, whose specialty was breaded, fried green tomatoes.
The storytelling happens at Ninny’s nursing home, where Evelyn’s mean ol’ mother-in-law is unhappily ensconced. Evelyn is a bored Birmingham housewife who loves candy bars too much because her chubby baseball-fan hubby, Mr. Couch—who’s clearly named after the piece of furniture he favors—doesn’t love her enough. Rather than get garbage thrown at her by her mother-in-law, she’s happy to find herself uplifted by octogenarian Ninny’s meanderings down memory lane.
According to Ninny, Whistle Stop (Dixie during the Great Depression, that is) might as well have been Tara. You might have been to Whistle Stop before. It’s one of those tiny Southern towns where the white folks get along well with the black folks, the sassy belles are fabulously fun, and the nostalgia is as thick as cheese grits, but the KKK are always driving around in their gun-rack pickups, glowering at everybody.
Book Versus Movie
In Fannie Flagg’s novel “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe,” Idgie and Ruth like each other a whole lot, if you catch my drift, but in the movie, they seem to be really good friends.
Idgie is Mary Stuart Masterson riffing on her 1987 role in “Some Kind of Wonderful,” wherein, as the blond, Huck Finn-ish tomboy next door, she longed secretly for Eric Stoltz’s character. Mary-Louise Parker is fetchingly coquettish as Idgie’s demure pal Ruth, who had been betrothed to Idgie’s late big brother, Buddy (Chris O’Donnell). The ultimate payoff of “Fried Green Tomatoes” is actually the enjoyable chemistry between these two actresses.
Meanwhile, in the Mid-1980s
The modern story proceeds with Evelyn Couch becoming so inspired by Ninny’s glowing descriptions of Idgie’s devil-may-care attitude that she eventually throws off the patriarchal yoke. To put it in today’s popular but misguided terms—she starts taking control of her life. She eschews her candy bars! She stops trying to be alluring to her fat, ingrate husband by greeting him at the door wrapped in nothing but Saran Wrap (“Get inside before the neighbors see you!”) and starts selling cosmetics. It’s nice that the story gradually gives Evelyn the courage to grow spiritually upward instead of physically sideways.
