Riding in Cars with Boys Review
by Harvey S. Karten (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)October 22nd, 2001
RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
Columbia Pictures
Director: Penny Marshall
Writer: Beverly Donofrio (book), Morgan Ward
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Sara Gilbert, Steve Zahn, Brittany Murphy, Mika Boorem, Vincent Pastore
Penny Marshall's new film seems to have "Made for TV" written all over it. I think she intended the work, based on Beverly Donofrio's memoirs, to be a way for both Steve Zahn and Drew Barrymore to show what they've got and they do come through winningly, both broadening and deepening their heretofore accepted abilityas thesps. The story, however, is insipid, takes no real chances, and depends on audience ooohs and ahhs as we watch a succession of tykes in the role of Jason grow up through a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards which do little to make the story more cinematic or appealing.
"Riding in Cars with Boys" is the story of a shotgun marriage between a dim bulb, Ray (Steve Zahn) and an ambitious but careless 15-year-old, Beverly Donofrio (Drew Barrymore), dwelling in part on the immaturity of Ray as a slacker, a drunk and a drug addict but more importantly on the irresponsibility of a person who should have known better, the smart woman with aspirations to go to college and make something of herself. She gets into trouble in back seat (or the front seat) of a car which she was riding in with boys and with her best friend, Fay (Brittany Murphy). Her parents are not bad people and did not abuse their daughter except in that they really didn't listen to what she said and, while her dad (James Woods) has a terrific scene with his daughter when she was a pre-teen, laughing together as they rode in his spacious auto, when she innocently enough brought up the suggestion that he buy her a buy bra for Christmas so that she can attract boys better, he turns priggish and punitive without much cause.
The story is framed by the scene of Jason (Adam Garcia), a strikingly handsome young man, who is driving with his mom toward a dramatic meeting with his father--whom Beverly had divorced some time back because of his irresponsibility. We will learn later on that the purpose of the visit is not to re-acquaint her son with his dad but to get Ray's signature on a paper--required by her publisher before he can turn her memoirs into print, an account that will become a best seller and, obviously, a movie starring Drew Barrymore.
There is remarkable little in this overlong film with a claim to originality, though the performances of Ms. Barrymore and Mr. Zahn--the latter playing in his first altogether serious albeit usual dim-bulb guise--overshadows the work of James Woods (who
has none of the bite of his previous work) and Brittany Murphy (much edgier as the traumatized girl being analyzed by Michael Douglas in the recent "Don't Say a World"). The motif, however, is praiseworthy: If your life turns out other than how you expected it to be, look first to yourself as the cause and not to your parents, your lovers, or your horoscope.
Rated PG-13. Running time: 132 minutes. (C) 2001 by
Harvey Karten, [email protected]
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