Riding In Cars With Boys
Riding In Cars With Boys follows the life of Berverly Donofrio (Drew Barrymore) from early teens to mid-thirties. Beverly has big dreams and ambitions, however in her eagerness to grow up she makes many mistakes in her life. Bev gets pregnant at a very early age and marries a man that she didn’t want to in order to please her father. Everything seems to have gone...
Plot
Riding In Cars With Boys follows the life of Berverly Donofrio (Drew Barrymore) from early teens to mid-thirties. Beverly has big dreams and ambitions, however in her eagerness to grow up she makes many mistakes in her life. Bev gets pregnant at a very early age and marries a man that she didn’t want to in order to please her father. Everything seems to have gone wrong for Bev, but she is a strong willed woman and is determined to make the best life she can for herself and her son.
Review
My other half picked this film up at the local supermarket and remembering the trailer I saw, I immediately dismissed it as a chick-flick. Not that there’s anything wrong with that of course, it’s just that they are generally not my kind of film. I can safely say though, that I was wrong to dismiss the film so casually and I’m now very glad indeed that I watched it.
The main thrust of Riding With Cars With Boys is a story of choices, large or small and how they can affect the whole of our lives. In one particular scene Bev (Drew Barrymore) quotes a line from her book: “One day can make your life, one day can ruin your life. All life is, is four or five big days that change everything” and this perfectly captures the essence of the whole film.
Reading the write-up for the film it sounds like it’s going to be a very serious 120 or so minutes, and indeed in places it is very serious. However it is broken up by some genuinely funny (although thankfully never slapstick) light-hearted moments. Unfortunately these moments become fewer and further apart during the last hour of the film.
This brings me on to my only real complaint, the film felt at least 15-20 minutes too long. Why 120 minutes seems to be the accepted length of a film these days, when more often than not there isn’t 120 minutes of story in there is beyond me. An enjoyable film experience, did start to become a little bit of a struggle in the last quarter as the story was somewhat dragged out for the final 30 minutes.
Drew Barrymore delivers, the best performance of her career so far as Beverly, although she is the main character of the story I found that I could never quite get completely on her side. Although she is strong willed and determined to make the best life for herself and (eventually) her son. She is also stubborn, self-centred and all too willing to blame others for the bad choices she has made in her life. I think it’s these character faults that not only underpin the whole story, but also help to make the character more believable.
Mention also has to go to Steve Zhan who plays Beverly’s husband Ray. He plays the part perfectly and even with his irresponsible behaviour there are many moments in the film when I really felt for him. Both he and Drew also manage to convey the various ages between teens to mid thirty’s extremely well, both in physical appearance and behaviour. There’s also some strong supporting cast here, in particular James Wood and Lorraine Bracco as Bev’s father and mother respectively. Also Brittany Murphy as Bev’s best friend Fay and Mika Boorem as Bev aged 11 who in the early scenes of the film really helps to set the character of Beverly.
Video/Audio
Overall the video quality is excellent on the disk, the film is presented in its original 1.85:1 Anamorphic widescreen format. A very colourful sharp picture with no sign of film scratches, artefacts etc throughout. My only complaint is that occasionally the picture can look a little grainy, but apart from that this is a good quality disk.
Although the disk has a very good quality Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, this was never going to be a disk to show off your fancy new amp with. This is a very dialogue driven film and as such features heavily on the front of the sound stage. The musical score from Hans Zimmer fits the film perfectly and there are many pop songs throughout the film that match the relevant period (60’s,70’s etc).
Extras
The Audio Commentary from Drew Barrymore is reasonable if not great. She is very enthusiastic throughout the commentary and she talks a great deal about her relationship with the Director Penny Marshall and Author Beverly Donofrio whose life story this film is based on. Unfortunately she seems to run out of things to say after a while and falls into the dreaded trap that quite a few commentaries fall into. Yes, I’m afraid she starts to explain each scene as it’s playing, telling us what the story is all about. After about an hour or so, this starts to become quite painful and I soon found myself jumping ahead a few chapters.
There’s a collection of featurettes including Drew’s Trailer Tour (4.5 Mins) which is a collection of interview clips with Drew Barrymore and Beverly Donofrio, among others. Bev and Ray’s House (3.5 Mins) is a feature on how they managed to film so much in such a small house, it’s amazing to see how every room was moveable and could be slid around for better camera angles. The Cars (3 Mins) as you can probably guess is a feature on the cars of the film across the many different years that the story spans. Beverly and Jason (6 Mins) is a feature on the real Beverly Donofrio and her son Jason, it includes interview clips with them and the people around them. The HBO Special (22 Mins) is at least as good if not better than the usual HBO affair and contains plenty of interview clips, behind the scenes footage etc.
The Trailers section features a trailer for this film as well as “A League of Their Own”, “Hanging Up” and “Stepmom”. Finally there is a selection of Filmographies for the main cast and director Penny Marshall. The film is broken into 28 chapters and has subtitles in English, English HOH and Hindi. All menus are simply but effectively animated.
Overall
As you’ve probably gathered by now, I rather enjoyed watching this film and think it’s definitely one that I could watch more than once. It’s a shame that it’s dragged out a bit, as it does get a bit long in the tooth towards the end. As for the DVD itself, very good Audio and Video quality along with a reasonable if not exceptional collection of extras make for a good value purchase.
If you’re male and your reading this, don’t be put off by the fact that it sounds like a bit of a girl’s film. View it with an open mind and you can get plenty of enjoyment out of it. Plus, think of all the brownie points you’ll earn when you buy the film for the woman in your life.
This page has been read:
2098
times