No way Ninny could be Idgie

They aren't the same person.

In the book it's clear that Idgie and Ninny are two different people, but the book is told by an omniscient third person narrator, who can tell about the exchanges between Ruth and Idige in detail.

It's a difficult form to adapt to the movie since they made it seem like Ninny was telling the stories about Idgie and Ruth, which doesn't seem possible since Ninny wasn't present for those events.

Even so, I don't see Idgie being the kind of person to tell intimate stories about her relationships to anyone or even befriending Evelyn so easily. Idgie is a private person. The relationship between her and Ruth is exceptional not only for what they went through, but because Ruth was able to reach a person like Idgie.

Maybe you're a youngin. i have seen many a feisty young people and even puppies, grow to be a lot more reserved. You can only have that youthful spunk for so long.

I still like to think Ninny is Idgie as a southern gentile lady with all those memories about Ruth, Sipsie and Buddy. If she wasn't Idgie she knew an awful lot about everything.

I don't understand why people keep saying they are the same person when it's impossible. In the beginning Niny clearly says she had a crush on buddy which would be incest if she was pidgey. And she said who she married. But to someone else's point the age thing doesn't make sense. Ninny is old yet had to be a kid when buddy was alive to have had a crush on him. And if Idgey is still alive at the end she must be super old.

No - she ain't. But that wasn't clear to me the 1st few times I watched the film. It's easier to understand in the book which actually has Idgie in the closing scene.

"Ninny" was most definitely Idgie. Look at her room at the nursing home. She had a framed photo of Ruth, along with what looked like decoupage on the walls of bees, flowers, etc. Why would she have a framed photo of Ruth? Also, Ninny is the only one who could've put that jar of honey at Ruth's grave. She was totally in love with Ruth. At the end of the movie, Evelyn winks at Ninny in an all-knowing look. She KNEW Ninny was Idgie.

Ninny had pictures of Ruth, bees, etc all over her room: She was Idgie!

I've never read the book, but have seen the movie over a dozen times through the years.
As the way the MOVIE portrays it, I believe Ninny is Idgie. I think a movie can exist along with a book, in the same universe, yet have artistic liberties taken.
As presented in the movie, Ninny knows too much to just be a 3rd party reflecting on what was presumably told to her or only sporadically being present for such incidents.
But what solidifies it (no pun intended actually!), is the bee/honey thing. Getting that honey from the swarms of bees is something very rarely done. To have 2 people in the same family being able to do it seems almost impossible. It would have to take someone special to do that (especially, for someone who didn't do it professionally for a living). Idgie got the honey earlier in the movie and put it in a jar, just like is shown at the end. And we see Ninny's mischevious smile (along with Evelyn's reaction, seemingly to also now know the truth). Idgie somehow did it again (though probably with much fewer bees present this time, or maybe even store or farmer-bought).