As long as the Lifetime channel is making true-life movies by the dozens, you needn't buy a ticket to see "Riding in Cars With Boys," because you'd be wasting your money.
The film shares its title with Beverly Donofrio's memoir. The film portrays the touching story of how Bev (played on screen exquisitely by Drew Barrymore) overcomes the obstacles of being pregnant with her son, Jason, while a teenager. And, like "Erin Brockovich," it does so without changing a name and remains reasonably faithful to the source material Donofrio provided in her book.
But the film lacks depth -- like most books-cum-motion pictures, many details of Donofrio's life are sacrificed for time's sake.
And the cuts undermine the film's awkward pacing. The first half-hour goes by quickly, and Bev's childhood memories contain the kind of attention to detail that only could come from real-life experiences. It's a funny, light-hearted story that leads one to think the entire movie will be filled with similarly colorful recollections.
But such is not the case. What follows is a plot that drags the audience through roughly 70 minutes of unrestricted tedium. The problem is not the actors but in the the way story is told. Some scenes play out like word-for-word antecdotes told by Donofrio herself, while other scenes are rushed, and the intimacy vital to the film's success doesn't hold itself together.
After two hours of Jason's (Adam Garcia) feelings toward his mother are ignored, the movie turns around and spends almost 15 minutes toward the end of the movie revealing how he really feels. It's as if the subplot was forgotten and tacked on toward the end; it seems pointless to cram an entire sequel's worth of plot material into the film's final scenes.
