Poor Beverly D.

"Riding in Cars with Boys", aside from being one of the most heavy-handed, tragically artless films directed by a supposedly seasoned director (Penny Marshall) that I have ever witnessed, is also one of the most pathetically written.

The movie makes us sit through the (long, lonnnnnnng and dreary) story of poor Beverly D'Onofrio, saddled with a drug-addicted loser of a spouse (a believably muddled Steve Zahn) and a little boy (who's, let's face it, adorable), who longs to leave her small town banality and become a writer. We are forced to see her thwarted at every turn, betrayed by everybody she loves, blah blah blah...until finally her son is grown and she shows up at her heroin-addict husband's new hovel to find him married to (get this) Rosie Perez.

We find out that Beverly has moved to NYC, gotten a job at a newspaper and has completed a book. But guess what??! We are never shown (or even TOLD) HOW she finally broke away and created a new life for herself.

The only interest I had in this soap opera from hell - in fact, the only real drama in the story - would have been the satisfaction of seeing Bev free herself from her suffocating non-life, but that transition was LEFT OUT, leaving us to slog through more heavy-handed (and way beyond tedious) scenes of supposed closure between Beverly and her now-grown son, in which every brutal banality in the book is foisted upon us in an attempt to make us feel something other than battered. We do not.

Even a wonderful actor like Drew Barrymore can't save this movie from its own mired muck. If you're thinking of renting this tripe, I suggest you drive down to your local In and Out Burger and ask for it "Animal-style" instead. MUCH more rewarding. (And far less time-consuming.)