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LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

mifunesamurai This was the perfect vehicle for Drew Barrymore, who with her looks was able to play a role ranging from a teenager to a mature woman. Her main strength was playing the role of the young struggling mother with great conviction, while her performance as a teenage was a little annoying (a real teenager would have given it more conviction). As the young mother with a late teenage son, she was a little aloof. I'm not sure if that was meant to be her character, but it didn't seem right after giving it plenty of heart and soul in the earlier scenes as the very young mother.The real stars where the child actors, specially the young Beverly who was hilarious in the bra scene with her father the police office (played to perfection by James Wood). The young Jason was another standout and it saved the film, as did Steve Zahn, who gave a heartfelt performance and supplied the humour.Penny Marshall seemed to handle the subject well, sometimes just taking a little dip into the Soap Opera territory, but then able to pull back in time, allowing us to to take a ride through Beverly D'Onofrio's interesting passage in life.

Odat Chestionare auto I think "Riding in Cars with Boys" is a movie that offers a few life lessons for teenagers. It takes guts to keep a child when you have a life full of promises and perspectives, but Beverly gave up to all those things in order to have a baby, a son, and offer him a chance to education. At first I didn't know what this movie is all about, I thought it's about cars and races, myself being a fan of Nascar and F1, I actually have a Romanian website that teaches teens how to drive http://www.odat.ro Anyway, I'm a huge fan of Drew Barrymore and Steve Zahn so even though it's not a movie about cars, it surely worths watching, especially since it's based on a true story.

Steve Pulaski Riding in Cars With Boys does an amazing job at avoiding hazards, caricatures, comedic relief, and most importantly, formulas. It's an exercise in mature and honest filmmaking, and every actor and actress is blessed by the great material they've been handed.The film tells the sad but heart-warming coming of age parable, taking place in the 1960's, of a young woman named Beverly Donofrio (Barrymore) who becomes a mother at the tender age of fifteen, gets married to the loser she can barely look at by the end of the film named Ray (Zahn), and tries to stay in school to secure her life. The story is true and is taken from the autobiography of the same name.Beverly is likable, but desperate, and there are many situations she gets involved in that could label her a bad mother. Frequently in the film I imagined the characters were sitting around a poker table and Beverly was dealt the worst of the hands. She plays them, hoping to score, but inevitably, risks are taken and her luck turns sour. She is ambitious and willing to win the pot, but she can't make a whole lot of the cards she has but to play them and hopefully upgrade them for some bigger ones.Her parents are played extraordinarily by James Woods, giving a performance just as good as he did as the pimp Lester Diamond in Casino, and Lorraine Bracco who does her best to pursue and cope with her daughter's hefty decisions.Beverly and Ray are with each other because they have to be. Are they in love? No, it's more of a mutual liking between them. They don't hate each other, although shadows of extreme disgust and dislike begin to show further in the story. They're with each other because if not, she'd be a tramp and he'd be a deadbeat scumbag. This depicts the time in the world where men stepped up and made attempts to father the child they mistakingly brought into the world. And the women turn to her books and schoolwork as much as she could if impregnated at a young age. Now, when a woman is pregnant, before she calls her boyfriend, she tries to secure a deal with MTV.The supporting work doesn't just stem from Woods and Bracco. It's everywhere. Brittany Murphy gives one of the best performances of her career as Fay, Bev's best friend who also is attempting to bring up a kid in this world. She is raising a girl named Amelia, while Bev is bringing up a boy named Jason. The young, vibrant romance between the two youths is woefully under-developed and that is one thing the film should've been dripping with.Steve Zahn is captivating as well. He's an actor that can play virtually anyone. A screw up brother in one of my favorite horror films, a goofball father, a drugged out loser, and an idiot backup to Jack Black and Jason Biggs.One other minor complaint is the fact that at some points the film feels more considered with reenacting the nostalgia of the sixties than actually developing the story or advancing it. Sure, the beautiful set pieces and photography compliment the script, but the overall pictorial aspect could've been ignored to focus more on the realism of the events. The Vietnam War is mentioned, and many other elements of the sixties, all of which are used very attentively and properly. Not gratuitously.Drew Barrymore is simply convincing and enigmatic as Beverly. She puts herself in the role of this desperate woman who frequently feels as if she needs to father her son and her husband. Her performance reminds me greatly of Natalie Portman's in Where the Heart Is. There's a depressing work of art, but both performances are so enigmatic and delightful that they shine a ray of sun on a plot so grim at some points. Barrymore portrays the struggles of a woman of the time period in a way that is very difficult to accomplish. She nails it with stunning honesty and piercing accuracy in her emotional struggles.And that's the keyword here; honesty. This film is genuine, and not sugarcoated. Life can seriously suck sometimes. The film makes no attempt to hide that. The things Riding in Cars With Boys is astounding and nonetheless memorable. It's a tender film with so much to show other than being a great coming of age drama. With the way it's filmed, acted, and written I'm shocked none of the credits read "Rob Reiner." Starring: Drew Barrymore, Brittany Murphy, Adam Garcia, Steve Zahn, James Woods, and Lorraine Bracco. Directed by: Penny Marshall.

deerhunter-11 This could have been written about my mother and me...we watched this together..and just kept looking at each other. It seemed as though we were watching a re-enactment of our life story. And just like Beverly in the movie..she didn't get it either...my mother seems to think it's all about her...her life that was screwed up. We lived in the same hell holes...had the same doped out hippies hanging around. My father wasn't on drugs..but was a severe abusive alcoholic. My mother was smart..and wound up pregnant by a loser. I am a grown man of 42 now...and watching this brings back a flood of memory's...and it's really hard to not tear up...especially the scene in which Jason meets his father at the age of 20. I too experienced this..only to see a man who was once a James Dean look alike,,now a broken down alcoholic...with nothing to show for his life