Home Fries Review
by James Sanford (jasanfor AT MCI2000 DOT com)January 6th, 1999
You could dress a hamburger up with hollandaise sauce and raspberry chutney and still not have a dish that could pass for haute cuisine. Similarly, writer Vince Gilligan has invested "Home Fries" with plenty of eccentric characters and wacky situations but hasn't quite come up with enough movie to fill the big screen. This homey, homely little tale has "Lifetime movie special" written all over it.
That may be part of the reason "Fries" has been on the back-burner at Warner Brothers for the better part of two years; the only conceivable reason for its appearance now is the surprise success of Drew Barrymore's recent turns in "The Wedding Singer" and "Ever After."
But though her fans may applaud Barrymore's willingness to hide her sex appeal under a Little Orphan Annie hairdo and an enormous belly, "Fries" is one of her lesser vehicles. As Sally, the slightly dim drive-thru cashier whose affair with a married man ends with her pregnant and him dead, Barrymore waddles through scene after scene in a variety of shabby housedresses and fussy, fluffy sweaters, the kinds of ridiculous clothes Hollywood seems for some reason to believe downtrodden young women in the Midwest actually wear. Since Sally is a cheery and passive sort, Barrymore's performance is little more than a series of cherubic smiles and fey line-readings.
Like "Meet Joe Black," "Fries" infantilizes its love interest, in this case Luke Wilson's Dorian, who's supposed to be a helicopter pilot and former soldier, but who still sleeps in bunk beds with his brother Angus (Jake Busey) and gets all gee-whiz bashful whenever Sally's near. No wonder The Reverend Horton Heat's "Big Little Baby" is featured on the soundtrack. The charms of "Fries" are mostly incidental, like the "Space Cadet" lunchbox Sally carries or the wake at which "You Light Up My Life" can be heard playing in the background. The only stand-out in the cast is Catherine O'Hara's twisted portrait of a widow so obsessed with finding out the identity of her late husband's mistress she believes she can feel the woman's presence in the air, "like the sick, sweet smell of a cow's breath." This is a movie that strains to win over its audience with its cornpone characters and every so often the effort pays off as director Dean Parisot concocts a truly funny scene or a convincingly tender moment between Sally and Dorian. But finally "Home Fries" is much like the food it takes its name from -- a trifle greasy and sorely lacking in nourishment. James Sanford
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