Friday, October 19, 2001

Warning: ‘Boys’ is bleak version of chick flick

Hey, all you chicks looking for a chick flick, a word of warning: “Riding in Cars With Boys” is way more bleak than it looks.

The commercials make it seem like a romantic comedy with a couple of dramatic scenes wedged in. Really, it’s a heavy, weepy drama with some light moments sprinkled throughout.

The tone, the excessive length and the repetitiveness of some of the scenes make the movie a much more draining ride than it needs to be.

Director Penny Marshall, who achieved a nice balance of funny and feel-good with previous movies like “Big,” “Awakenings” and “A League of Their Own,” tries to wring every tear she can from the audience’s eyes.

But the movie gives Drew Barrymore a chance to show some range beyond the sunny, goofy perkiness that’s typified her recent work — although she’s either on the verge of tears or convulsing with sobs for nearly three-fourths of the movie.

Barrymore stars as Beverly Donofrio in “Riding in Cars With Boys,” adapted from Donofrio’s 1990 memoir. We watch her character age from 15 to 35, which Barrymore, at 26, pulls off more believably when Beverly’s in her teens and 20s. Dark lipstick and a bossy demeanor don’t make her seem a decade older than she is.

Beverly grows up in a blue-collar Connecticut town and gets pregnant at 15, which devastates her policeman father (James Woods) and housewife mom (Lorraine Bracco).

The baby’s father is Ray Hasek (Steve Zahn), an 18-year-old high school dropout who’s aimless but well-intentioned. They get married, and the tacky reception is just as painful for the audience to sit through as it is for the embarrassed guests.

Beverly’s best friend, Fay, announces at the wedding that she’s also gotten pregnant by her boyfriend, and the two raise their babies together.

Whatever dreams Beverly had of going to college and becoming a writer, she reluctantly sets aside to be a mother to her baby boy, Jason — not the little girl she’d hoped for.

A few years pass, and Ray degenerates from a lovable slacker to a heroin addict.

Beverly herself is often neglectful and abusive, and as she and Jason get older together, each blames the other for the deficiencies in their lives. Beverly whines that she never gets to have any fun because she’s always taking care of Jason, and he has the same complaint — and they’re both right, which the movie depicts honestly.

Barrymore obviously worked hard on this role; it’s the best work she’s ever done — and the most demanding work she’s ever done.

Still, her supporting cast outshines her at nearly every turn.

Brittany Murphy, so annoyingly mannered in the recent “Don’t Say a Word,” is charming as Fay and shows the comic timing that first got her noticed in 1995’s “Clueless.”

Even though the back-and-forth flashback structure is awkward — from Beverly’s youth to her adulthood, when she’s about to publish her memoirs — the scenes she shares with Jason as an adult, played by Adam Garcia, are compelling because Garcia brings warmth and honesty to the role.

Zahn upstages Barrymore most of all; probably the movie’s most powerful scene is the one in which he says good-bye to his son after Beverly kicks him out of the house. He makes Ray a multidimensional, tragic figure, heartbreaking to watch because he’s so hopeless.

— The Associated Press