Product Description

Based on the autobiographical best-seller by Beverly Donofrio, this winning comedy/drama stars Drew Barrymore as a teenager in '60s Connecticut whose dreams of college and a writing career are detoured when she becomes pregnant by classmate Steve Zahn. The couple's later marriage is doomed by Zahn's drug abuse, and Barrymore must fight to provide a better life for her son. With Lorraine Bracco, Adam Garcia, Brittany Murphy, James Woods. 131 min. Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital stereo; Subtitles: English, Chinese, French, Korean, Thai; audio commentary; featurettes; "making of" documentary; filmographies; theatrical trailers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12111 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Published on: 2002-03-01
• Released on: 2002-03-19
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Chinese, English, French, Korean
• Dubbed in: French
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 132 minutes

Amazon.com
Riding in Cars with Boys achieves broad appeal as a tearjerker laced with hardscrabble humor. In the crowd-pleasing hands of director Penny Marshall, Beverly Donofrio's bestselling memoir loses much of its real-life gravity, but its rich humanity remains in abundance, especially since Drew Barrymore plays Donofrio with effortless charm. The movie spans 20 years, from Bev's pregnancy at 15 in 1963 (actually 17 in the book), through welfare parenthood with a heroin-addicted husband (Steve Zahn), and semi-adult resentment as her teenaged son (Adam Garcia) takes priority over her ultimate goal of finishing college and publishing her memoir. For all of Barrymore's winning tenacity, it's Zahn's goodhearted loser who gives the film its genuine soul while lending an edge to Marshall's cloying sentiment. The material begs for the subtler touch of James L. Brooks (who produced this and Marshall's more delicate hit Big), but that won't stop this movie from attracting a legion of admirers. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
Beverly Donofrio's uncompromising memoir gets a semi-fictional makeover in the hands of the director Penny Marshall. The movie centers around Donofrio's ill-timed pregnancy at fifteen and how she copes with the frustrations of teen motherhood in her own not so pretty way. Drew Barrymore is never less than believable as she ages twenty years-raising a child, marrying the sweetly clueless father of her baby (Steve Zahn), and yearning for a better life. But it's the haunting performance by Zahn that gives the picture a surprisingly complex resonance. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker