Riding in Cars With Boys (2001)
Drew Barrymore, James Woods, Steve Zahn; d. Penny Marshall; C+

Ah, teenaged mothers. Those poor, innocent, sweet little girls who have a bad streak and raging hormones that lead them to the path to pregnancy. How sad it is to see these poor girls have their lives ruined by sperm and eggs, how their dreams are destroyed just because they didn't use a condom. Doesn't it just make you want to run out and hug the next pregnant teen you see?

Well I assume that was what Riding in Cars With Boys intended to be. A story about a poor ambitious girl who got pregnant. Let's just say that the movie succeeded in being so just as much as Beverly Donofrio (Drew Barrymore) succeeded in aborting her baby by falling down the steps.

It's perplexing to think of how this film wound up making Donofrio looking like a villian instead of a saint. She wines, insults, gets high on LSD while her son Jason (played by a buttload of kids and Adam Garcia) plays around on a covered pool, ignores her son while she aggressively persues her career in writing, yells at her son when her son does something that a kid would normally do or when her son does something that is leagally right, etc etc etc. And this is a Penny Marshall film?

Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe this is supposed to be a scathing portrait of ambitious teenaged mothers who don't realize that doing the horizontal dance will result in pregnancy. Maybe it's supposed to say something about how people don't always get what they want, inspite of all their best wishes. If this is true, then Riding in Cars With Boys is another victim of false advertisment.

One thing that's for certain is that the film is an adaption of Donofrio's autobiography, even though, of course, some changes have been made. The film starts off with a young Donofrio (Mika Boorem, who is quickly on her way to being typecast as the paragon of Conneticut 1960's middle class little girl) teaching her little sister how to kiss, and later pleading her father (James Woods) to buy her a bra. Then, Jason's adult form interceeds. "Why didn't he just buy her the bra?" he asks the audience. "But she got over it." Fast foward to New York City, 1985. Beverly is 35, her son is 20, and on the verge of telling his mother that he's leaving her for his girlfriend in Indiana. The film flips back and forth between Jason driving ins mother to his father's (Steve Zahn) house in order to get clearance to publish her autobiography, and Beverly's youth as a young mother. Beverly is a teenager whose hormones have taken over her common sense. She's unpopular and promiscuous, a frequent embarrasment to her uptight Italian-American father. Somewhere in here she has a mother (Lorranie Bracco), but unfortunatley (for the actress involved) she's not very vital in the film. She has an equally promiscuous friend named Faye (repeat performer Brittany Murphy), and, oh, Beverly is also a writer who wants to go to New York University.

Then, she gets mixed up with a not too bright dropout named Ray (Zahn), who winds up getting her pregnant. She's upset, her father is angry, but Ray is ecstatic. Poor Beverly is thus forced into a shotgun wedding, which she more than obviously has no interest whatsoever in being in. She is only somewhat comforted from the fact that Faye is also pregnant and that they both expect to have girls, but things start to go wrong (in her mind) when she winds up having a boy instead.

Let's ignore the film's shaky thematic elements for a moment. At best this is decent as a film, yet still somewhat entertaining. Barrymore's much advertized performance is good enough but not the Oscar-worthy performance the film obviously wants it to be. It's James Woods, Steve Zahn, and Adam Garcia who give the best performances in the film. Zahn is excellent as the dimwitted Ray, a heartbreaking character who ironically turns out to be more sympathetic than Beverly. He's a drug addict and a screw up but it's obvious that he loves his wife and son. This is partially the problem with Barrymore's performance. While Zahn is overflowing with love, Barrymore is not, despite the fact that her character glibly says variations of "I love you" throughout the film. Her performance comes off as one big "f*** you" instead. So does Woods' performance, but I assume that's how it was ment to be. His character is the scorned and embarrased father, showing support for the union but making it clear in his daughter's mind that he is immensily dissapointed. Garcia doesn't have much to work with, but the sarcastic attitude he plays his character with is intriguing. Britney Murphy is proving herself to be a great character actress. Unfortunatley her character is a rather agitiating one. It's obvious that she has a bad influence on Beverly, making the audience wish she would go away. The most dissapointing performance comes from Lorraine Bracco. She's horridly underused and has no true purpouse in the film.

As for Marshall's direction: Nothing new. It's good, with a solid direction of the cast, but you've seen it before in Big and Awakeinings and you'll see it again later on in her career. And in the technical department there's nothing worth talking about except for the costumes. I'm quite sure this film will be one of pleasure for the given "chick flick" audience, and, sure, I enjoyed it, too. But looking at the film from a critical stand point it's nothing remarkable.