RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS

If the movie version of Beverly Donofrio’s memoir is to be believed, she’s lived the most thwarted life this side of It’s a Wonderful Life’s George Bailey. Aching to escape her small Connecticut town for New York, go to college, and become a writer, the movie’s Beverly (Drew Barrymore) finds her dreams quashed at every turn, always because some man betrays her or lets her down. (It’s like a Lifetime TV-movie without the tasteful Pottery Barn furnishings.) Impregnated at age 15, she marries Ray, the feckless father (Steve Zahn, playing another puppyish mook), but she frequently neglects her son to study or spend time with best friend Fay (scene stealer Brittany Murphy). Little Jason understandably resents mom, who ultimately throws out the dad he loves — Ray may be a junkie, but at least he’s a fun guy. Beverly finally achieves her goals (though the movie doesn’t show us how), but she and her family still have issues to settle.

Beverly is not a conventionally likable character, and Barrymore plays her with a minimum of her usual adorableness. Credit should probably go to producer James L. Brooks, whose film career (from Terms of Endearment to As Good As It Gets) has been spent making audiences weep for unlikable characters. Screenwriter Morgan Upton Ward didn’t show such an aptitude in A Pyromaniac’s Love Story, his only previous credit. Director Penny Marshall even tones down her sit-com-bred tendencies toward shtick and uncomplicated emotions, at least until she sentimentally ties up all the loose ends in the last 15 minutes. We’re left with a standard Hollywood you-can-do-anything-if-you-want-it-badly-enough message when everything we’ve seen so far suggests that all plans are futile, all children inevitably become their parents, and only an unseen miracle from Clarence the Angel could have helped Beverly escape her lot.

— Gary Susman