HOME FRIES

Twisted and dysfunctional is the best way to describe the Lever family, and the movie HOME FRIES tells their crazy tale. Insanely upset by her husband’s infidelity, Mrs. Lever (Catherine O’Hara, who perfected insane comedy in the HOME ALONE series) involves her two sons from a previous marriage, Dorian (Luke Wilson, who starred in the similar quirky BOTTLE ROCKET) and Angus (Jake Busey), in a little scheme to scare Mr. Henry Lever back into fidelity. Henry’s pregnant lover, Sally Jackson (Drew Barrymore), becomes the ensuing catalyst for a series of madcap mishaps involving all members of this twisted family in an off-beat romantic comedy.

Sally Jackson, a drive-through window cashier at the Burger-Matic burger joint, discovers that Henry Lever, boyfriend and father of her baby, is a married man. Despite Henry’s nightly pleas at the drive-through window, she determines to keep her baby. Later, the two stepsons, who are helicopter pilots with the National Guard, chase Henry with a Cobra helicopter. During the chase, Henry suffers a heart attack and dies, and the young men realize that Sally was on the helicopter’s radio frequency at the Burger-Matic. Sally doesn’t really know anything, other than the fact that her headset sometimes picks up truckers and radio stations. Even so, Angus decides it would be best to eliminate her – for his mother’s sake, just to be safe.

Dorian gets a job at Burger-Matic to find out if Sally knows anything. The closer Dorian gets to her, the more he realizes that he doesn’t really want to kill her, he would rather marry her instead. Mrs. Lever, however, becomes more insane, fueling Angus’ rage, and driving Dorian to become Sally’s protector rather than her stalker. Finally, after joining in her La Maz classes and protecting her from her drunken father on a shotgun rampage, Dorian defends Sally in a final confrontation against Augus and his totally wigged-out mother involving helicopters, car chases and more.

In this movie, Drew Barrymore holds onto some of her sweetness as seen in THE WEDDING SINGER and EVER AFTER, while also implying adulterous behavior, like some of the trashier aspects from her other movies. Here, her role is slight and one-dimensional as a trailer-park fast food server who has an affair with a much older married man. This unsavory dramatic plot point stands in contrast to her pleasant on-screen persona and makes her relationship with Henry’s stepson, Dorian, slightly unbelievable. All other performances are only perfunctory, except Catherine O’Hara who relishes the complete craziness of her role as a manipulative, cunning, evil woman who is in complete denial about her own sin.

All in all, this movie only serves to show Catherine O’Hara’s character fall from bad to worse with comic and absurd proportions. As a PG-13 movie, it does avoid some potentially sickening images and scenes, to the writer’s credit, but HOME FRIES is a one-joke movie. It is SERIAL MOM sending her sons to do the dirty work. HOME FRIES evoked some of the same feelings as RAISING ARIZONA starring Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter, but without the sharp wit of the Coen Brothers who made that movie.

HOME FRIES rates on the level of a similar movie released this time last year, EXCESS BAGGAGE. It features a sharp young star, in a throwaway role, with a few mildly amusing moments, and a little action. It is offbeat and off-kilter, a blip in this year’s releases which offers something different than big budgets and special effects, but not enough charm or humor.