By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * )
It wasn't the riding in cars with boys that caused her problems. It was what happened when they stopped.
Drew Barrymore shows her Serious Actress side (let's just forget Charlie's Angels and the forthcoming Barbarella remake for the moment) with an impressive performance as
a thoroughly unlikeable character.
Beverly Donofrio is a woman, old before her time, with a junkie husband and a son from a teenage pregnancy who gets in the way of her quest for personal growth. She lives in a poor part of town that the police know pretty well because her father is the town's police chief.
As the movie opens that son, Jason, is 20 and driving his mother to meet the father he barely remembers. She has written a book about her life - yes, this one, Riding In Cars ... - and needs him to sign a letter to protect the publishers from a lawsuit.
Through the movie Barrymore ages from 15 to 36, from the late 1950s to the edge of the 80s, from teenage, sunfrocked hope to blood-red lipsticked, overcoated defiance. As dreams fall around her Beverly plugs away, trying to take classes and win scholarships, trying to give Jason a start in life. Every time she looks at him, however, Beverly sees Jason as the cause of her misery.
As her husband, Ray Hasek, Steve Zahn gives a similarly impressive performance, a piece of human wreckage, barely floating. Her parents - police chief Leonard Donofrio (James Woods) and his wife, Teresa (Lorraine Bracco, Tony Soprano's shrink) - are familiar figures, not bad people, just obsessed with "doing the right thing".
By the time lives have run their course, and Jason and Beverly have arrived at Ray's trailer, Jason sees that his mother is more concerned about her book than him, than anything. The mother is blaming the son, the son the mother, and Ray has the guts to blame himself.
One step removed from the Hollywood formula, one step dirtier and bolder, there's a lot of truth in this movie.
Rental video, DVD: Today
* DVD features: movie (132min); commentary with Barrymore; trailers; 4 features: HBO Making Of ... , Drew's Trailer Tour, Bev and Ray's House, The Cars, Beverly and Jason: Sons and Lovers; text/photo galleries; filmographies; production notes.
