Upon discovering the undeniable fact of her pregnancy, a 15-year-old Beverly D’Onofrio repeatedly launches herself down the carpeted stairs of her Wallingford, Conn. home. The result? A hysterical feat of slap-stick comedy, resembling a favorite childhood game I fondly referred to as “bumpety-bump.” After this failed attempt at the unspeakable, Bev taps into her seemingly infinite well of wit and courage to confront her parents with the news.
There are bitter moments when you look around and say, with something less than satisfaction, “This is going to be my life.” Bev’s life is full of these moments, except that she never loses sight of her dream: to go to college and to write. Based on Beverly D’Onofrio’s memoir, Riding in Cars with Boys traces her life from her teenage innocence, truncated by pregnancy, to adulthood. She is forced into a shotgun marriage with her child’s father, the loving if simple Ray Hasek. Steve Zahn portrays Ray with enough emotional purity to make sympathizing with a thief and a junkie seem perfectly natural. Reality further tightens its grip on Bev when she learns of Ray’s heroin addiction, but once again, she survives. Every scene of the movie is gently infused with a sense of tragedy and hope.
The movie skips deftly between past and present, enabling us to easily piece together the story, while being sucked into the very real life of a very real person. Scenes depicting Bev’s present are afire with plot-fueling urgency. According to Bev’s now college-age son, the more nervous she is, the more make-up she wears. As she disappears under layers of red lipstick, Bev recounts the events leading up to a fateful moment. The question burns: Will she, with whom we’ve inevitably fallen in love, get the lucky break she deserves?
Though never lulled into complacency by the promise of a happy end, we are continuously reassured by a few key elements. First, Bev has the regeneration power of a starfish?no sooner has one dream been cut off than the next grows in its place, nurtured by her positive perspective. Second, she has a best friend. Brittany Murphy (Clueless) is Fay, the friend who gets you into trouble and then (at least psychologically) gets you out of it. As their classmates ride off to junior prom past the Wallingford dairy mart, Bev and her best friend look on, bulging with an imminent fate. What do they do? Bump bellies and let their kicking babies play.
That every scene of the movie reflects the personality of our heroine renders Riding in Cars with Boys remarkable. Drew Barrymore’s portrayal of Bev catapults her into a new realm of acting. She’s always been loveable?now, she’s veritable. Barrymore is Bev, the girl who crafts and unabashedly delivers a love poem to her rude jock crush at a high school party. She is Bev, who works double shifts while raising a kid and applying for a college scholarship. She is perhaps most impressive as Bev, the mother who never talks down to her son and never loses sight of her dreams.
Director Penny Marshall proves herself to be, forgive the pun, in a league of her own. She orchestrates a cast who must progress through two decades of changing relationships and roles. To its detriment, the film fails to commit to the strongest relationship, that between Bev and Fay, preferring to explore the murkier ones. On hiatus from his usual bad-guy role, James Woods plays Bev’s policeman Dad. Theirs is the first bond to break and the last to repair, resulting in the film’s only corny moment. Bev and her son, Jason, enjoy the most peculiar and touching rapport. Jason is not only a son?he is a father, a partner and a brother to Bev. They drag each other down and boost each other up in this world where equilibrium is a pipe dream.
Fundamentally, Riding in Cars with Boys is a movie about survival. Towards the end of the film, Jason’s father bestows a simple gift of advice, essential to this theme. When someone cares, no matter how mad they are, tell them you need their help. A little cheesy, yet very true.
