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Riding in Cars with Boys

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Riding in Cars with Boys
Riding in Cars with Boys film poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed byPenny Marshall
Screenplay byMorgan Upton Ward
Based onRiding in Cars with Boys
by Beverly Donofrio
Produced byJames L. Brooks
Laurence Mark
Sara Colleton
Richard Sakai
Julie Ansell
StarringDrew Barrymore
Steve Zahn
Brittany Murphy
Adam Garcia
Lorraine Bracco
James Woods
CinematographyMiroslav Ondříček
Edited byRichard Marks
Music byHans Zimmer
Heitor Pereira
Production
companies
Distributed bySony Pictures Releasing
Release date
  • October 19, 2001 (2001-10-19)
Running time
132 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$47 million[1]
Box office$35.7 million[2]

Riding in Cars with Boys is a 2001 American biographical film based on the autobiography of the same name by Beverly Donofrio, about a woman who overcame difficulties, including being a teen mother, and who later earned a master's degree. The movie's narrative spans the years 1961 to 1985. It stars Drew Barrymore, Steve Zahn, Brittany Murphy, and James Woods. It was the last film directed by Penny Marshall. Although the film is co-produced by Beverly Donofrio, many of its details differ from the book.

Discover more about Riding in Cars with Boys related topics

Biographical film

Biographical film

A biographical film or biopic is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. They differ from docudrama films and historical drama films in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a single person's life story or at least the most historically important years of their lives.

Autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written biography of one's own life.

Beverly Donofrio

Beverly Donofrio

Beverly Ann Donofrio is an American memoirist, children's author, and creative writing teacher known for her 1992 best selling memoir, Riding in Cars with Boys. The memoir was adapted into the 2001 film Riding in Cars with Boys, directed by Penny Marshall, with Drew Barrymore portraying Donofrio.

Master's degree

Master's degree

A master's degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice. A master's degree normally requires previous study at the bachelor's level, either as a separate degree or as part of an integrated course. Within the area studied, master's graduates are expected to possess advanced knowledge of a specialized body of theoretical and applied topics; high order skills in analysis, critical evaluation, or professional application; and the ability to solve complex problems and think rigorously and independently.

Drew Barrymore

Drew Barrymore

Drew Blythe Barrymore is an American actress, producer, talk show host, author and vineyard proprietor. A member of the Barrymore family of actors, she has received several awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for seven Emmy Awards and a British Academy Film Award. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004.

Steve Zahn

Steve Zahn

Steven James Zahn is an American actor and comedian. His film roles include Reality Bites (1994), Stuart Little (1999), Shattered Glass (2003), Sahara (2005), Chicken Little (2005), the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (2010–2012), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), The Good Dinosaur (2015), and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). On television, Zahn appeared as Davis McAlary on HBO's Treme (2010–2013), and as Mark Mossbacher in the first season of the HBO satire comedy miniseries The White Lotus (2021), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. He won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his performance in the film Happy, Texas (1999).

Brittany Murphy

Brittany Murphy

Brittany Anne Murphy-Monjack was an American actress and singer, known for playing Tai Frasier in the teen movie Clueless (1995), Alex Latourno in 8 Mile (2002) and Daisy Randone in Girl, Interrupted (1999).

James Woods

James Woods

James Howard Woods is an American actor. He is known for fast-talking intense roles on stage and screen. He received various accolades including three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards as well as nominations for two Academy Awards. He started his career in minor roles on and off-Broadway. In 1972, he appeared in The Trial of the Catonsville Nine alongside Sam Waterston on Broadway. In 1978, he made his television breakthrough alongside Meryl Streep, playing her husband in the acclaimed NBC miniseries Holocaust, which received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series.

Penny Marshall

Penny Marshall

Carole Penny Marshall was an American actress, director and producer. She is known for her role as Laverne DeFazio on the television sitcom Laverne & Shirley (1976–1983), receiving three nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy for her portrayal.

Plot

In 1961, 11 year-old Beverly "Bev" Donofrio rides with her father, Wallingford, Connecticut police officer Leonard. She asks for a bra for Christmas to get the attention of a boy, but he tells her she is too young and to focus on books.

In 1965, intelligent but naïve, Bev's dream is to go to college in New York City to become a writer. Joining her friends Fay and Tina at a party, Fay's older boyfriend, Bobby, is being deployed to Vietnam while Bev gives a love letter to popular boy, Sky. He reads it aloud, so she flees to the bathroom where she's consoled by Ray, a stranger, who defends her honor by fighting with Sky.

Bev and Ray, with Fay and Bobby, flee the party and go to a lookout, where Bobby and Fay have sex. Bev is overcome by Ray's kindness, so they do too. On duty, Leonard catches and takes them to the police station, and Bev claims that they only kissed.

Bev tells Ray she's pregnant and initially turns down his offer to get married but later agrees to a hasty wedding to placate her parents. At the reception, everyone is avoiding Bev, so Fay publicly announces she is also pregnant. As Fay's father wanted her to put the baby up for adoption, she and Bobby will get married instead.

The girls celebrate that they will be mothers together, but lament missing out on their childhood, the prom, and an education. Bev has a son, Jason (upsetting her, as she wanted a girl), while Fay has daughter Amelia. Bev continues studying. When Jason is three, her interview for a college scholarship goes badly when she has to take Jason along. Although the interviewer praises her writing, he fears she is too distracted.

Later, Fay reveals that she and Bobby are getting divorced as he met someone else. Bev tells her she's not sure if she loves Jason because his birth has cost her so much. When he almost drowns in Fay's pool, Bev vows to be more attentive.

At Jason's seventh birthday party, several people from Bev's high school come: Tina is engaged and going to NYU; and Tommy, who had a crush on Bev, just graduated from Berkeley. He suggests she move her family to California to get her degree as the state offers financial aid. Although initially agreeing, Ray confesses to being a heroin addict and spending their savings on drugs. Bev helps him detox, but he sneaks out to get more drugs. Saying he can't quit, she tells him to leave. Ray agrees, but young Jason chases after him, telling Bev he hates her.

Two years later, Bev and Fay help Lizard (Ray's friend) to dry weed in Bev's oven to get money to study in California. Jason, still bitter, tells Grandpa Leonard, who arrests the mothers. Fay's brother bails them out, but only if Fay and Amelia move with him and cut off contact with Bev, so she blames Jason.

In 1986, Bev and Jason are driving to see Ray. She has a college degree and needs Ray to sign a waiver to publish her memoir. On the way, Jason tells her he wants to transfer from NYU to Indiana University, but Bev refuses as he must get the education she couldn't.

Jason calls his now-girlfriend Amelia with the bad news, who is dejected but not angry. Arriving at Ray's trailer, Bev explains why they are there. When his wife, Shirley, demands $100,000, Bev storms out. Jason follows, calling her selfish for only caring about her book when he finally got to see his father again. He accuses her of being a bad mother and she stomps off. Ray tells Jason leaving was the best thing he could have done for him and that is why he turned out so well. He sneaks the signed papers to him.

Jason finds Bev, who insists she was a great mother who sacrificed everything for him. He reveals he is transferring to be with Amelia and apologizes for ruining her life. Bev softens, telling him she is proud and that he is the best thing in her life. Feeling responsible for her mistakes and poor choices, she gives him her car to drive to Indiana.

Stranded, Beverly calls her father Leonard for a ride. Complaining that Jason blames her for everything wrong in his life, she realizes that she herself has done the same to him. Together, they sing a song from her childhood as they drive away.

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Wallingford, Connecticut

Wallingford, Connecticut

Wallingford is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States, centrally located between New Haven and Hartford, and Boston and New York City. The population was 44,396 at the 2020 census. The community was named after Wallingford, in England.

Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. involvement ending in 1973. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist states by 1975.

New York University

New York University

New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.

California

California

California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the third-largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and it has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.

Indiana University

Indiana University

Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana.

Indiana

Indiana

Indiana is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th state on December 11, 1816. It is bordered by Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the south and southeast, and the Wabash River and Illinois to the west.

Cast

Discover more about Cast related topics

Drew Barrymore

Drew Barrymore

Drew Blythe Barrymore is an American actress, producer, talk show host, author and vineyard proprietor. A member of the Barrymore family of actors, she has received several awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for seven Emmy Awards and a British Academy Film Award. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004.

Beverly Donofrio

Beverly Donofrio

Beverly Ann Donofrio is an American memoirist, children's author, and creative writing teacher known for her 1992 best selling memoir, Riding in Cars with Boys. The memoir was adapted into the 2001 film Riding in Cars with Boys, directed by Penny Marshall, with Drew Barrymore portraying Donofrio.

Brittany Murphy

Brittany Murphy

Brittany Anne Murphy-Monjack was an American actress and singer, known for playing Tai Frasier in the teen movie Clueless (1995), Alex Latourno in 8 Mile (2002) and Daisy Randone in Girl, Interrupted (1999).

Adam Garcia

Adam Garcia

Adam Gabriel Garcia is an Australian stage, television, and film actor who is best known for lead roles in musicals such as Saturday Night Fever and Kiss Me, Kate. He is also a trained tap dancer and singer. Garcia has been nominated twice at the Laurence Olivier Awards in 1999 and 2013.

Logan Arens

Logan Arens

Logan Arens is an American actor. He is the brother of Cody Arens and Skye Arens. He is most notable for the voice of Littlefoot in The Land Before Time XIII: The Wisdom of Friends and as the roles of Jeremy, on The Education of Max Bickford and Chris on My Wife and Kids.

Cody Arens

Cody Arens

Cody Arens is an American actor. He is the brother of Logan Arens and Skye Arens.

Logan Lerman

Logan Lerman

Logan Wade Lerman is an American actor. He is known for playing the titular role in the fantasy-adventure Percy Jackson films. He appeared in commercials in the mid-1990s, before starring in the series Jack & Bobby (2004–2005) and the movies The Butterfly Effect (2004) and Hoot (2006). Lerman gained further recognition for his roles in the western 3:10 to Yuma, the thriller The Number 23, the comedy Meet Bill, and 2009's Gamer and My One and Only. He subsequently played d'Artagnan in 2011's The Three Musketeers, starred in the coming-of-age dramas The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), Indignation (2016) and The Vanishing of Sidney Hall (2017), and had major roles in the 2014 films Noah and Fury. In 2020, he returned to television with the series Hunters.

Lorraine Bracco

Lorraine Bracco

Lorraine Bracco is an American actress. Known for her distinct husky voice and Brooklyn accent, she has been nominated for an Academy Award, four Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.

James Woods

James Woods

James Howard Woods is an American actor. He is known for fast-talking intense roles on stage and screen. He received various accolades including three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards as well as nominations for two Academy Awards. He started his career in minor roles on and off-Broadway. In 1972, he appeared in The Trial of the Catonsville Nine alongside Sam Waterston on Broadway. In 1978, he made his television breakthrough alongside Meryl Streep, playing her husband in the acclaimed NBC miniseries Holocaust, which received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series.

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Margalit Ruth "Maggie" Gyllenhaal is an American actress, director, writer, and producer. Part of the Gyllenhaal family, she is the daughter of filmmakers Stephen Gyllenhaal and Naomi Achs, and the older sister of actor Jake Gyllenhaal.

Desmond Harrington

Desmond Harrington

Desmond Harrington is an American actor. He has appeared in The Hole (2001), Ghost Ship (2002), and Wrong Turn (2003), Desmond joined the cast of the Showtime series Dexter in its third season, as Det. Joseph "Joey" Quinn, and is also known for portraying Jack Bass, the uncle of Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl.

David Moscow

David Moscow

David Raphael Moscow is an American actor, producer and activist. He is best known for his role as the young Josh Baskin in the 1988 film Big and as David in the 1992 musical film Newsies.

Reception

Riding in Cars with Boys received mixed reviews. It holds a 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 109 reviews with an average rating of 5.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Riding in Cars with Boys suffers from mixing grit and pathos with cuteness and comedy. Ironically, many critics found Zahn's character more compelling and three-dimensional than Barrymore's".[3] Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "A film like this is refreshing and startling in the way it cuts loose from formula and shows us confused lives we recognize ... This movie is closer to the truth: A lot depends on what happens to you, and then a lot depends on how you let it affect you".[4] In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden praised Steve Zahn's performance: "It is hard to imagine what Riding in Cars With Boys would have been without Mr. Zahn's brilliantly nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of Ray, who goes through more changes than Beverly".[5] USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and found that the "strength of the movie lies in these performances and in the situational humor, though ultimately the ending is disappointing, attempting to wrap up loose ends far too neatly".[6]

Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "C+" rating, and wrote, "... every scene is bumpered with actorly business and production detail that says more about nostalgia for the pop culture of earlier American decades than about the hard socioeconomic truths of being a poor, young, undereducated parent".[7] In her review for The Washington Post, Rita Kempley criticized Barrymore's performance: "Barrymore, a delightful comic actress, has the spunk for the role, but can't do justice to the complexities of Beverly's conflicted personality. So she comes off as abrasive and neglectful as opposed to headstrong and ambitious, winning no empathy for this sour single mom".[8] Edward Guthmann also had problems with Barrymore's performance in his review for the San Francisco Chronicle: "She never relaxes, never surrenders to the character, but instead tries to justify her and to make us like her despite her selfishness and poor mothering. American actors as a rule are terrified of playing unsympathetic characters, particularly when they've gained the celebrity and box-office appeal that Barrymore has".[9] Giving the 2 out of 4 stars, Ron Weiskind of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called it "a troubling trip" and "is one bumpy ride".[10]

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Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang. Although the name "Rotten Tomatoes" connects to the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes in disapproval of a poor stage performance, the original inspiration comes from a scene featuring tomatoes in the Canadian film Léolo (1992).

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times said Ebert "was without question the nation's most prominent and influential film critic," and Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called him "the best-known film critic in America."

The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times, also referred to as the Gray Lady, is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2022 to comprise 740,000 paid print subscribers, and 8.6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as The Daily. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company. The Times has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print, it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the United States. The newspaper is headquartered at The New York Times Building in Times Square, Manhattan.

USA Today

USA Today

USA Today is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virginia. Its newspaper is printed at 37 sites across the United States and at five additional sites internationally. The paper's dynamic design influenced the style of local, regional, and national newspapers worldwide through its use of concise reports, colorized images, informational graphics, and inclusion of popular culture stories, among other distinct features.

Lisa Schwarzbaum

Lisa Schwarzbaum

Lisa Schwarzbaum is an American film critic. She joined Entertainment Weekly as a film critic in the 1990s and remained there until February 2013.

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular culture. The magazine debuted on February 16, 1990, in New York City, and ceased print publication in 2022.

The Washington Post

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area.

San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

The San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The paper is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which bought it from the de Young family in 2000. It is the only major daily paper covering the city and county of San Francisco.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also known simply as the PG, is the largest newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Descended from the Pittsburgh Gazette, established in 1786 as the first newspaper published west of the Allegheny Mountains, the paper formed under its present title in 1927 from the consolidation of the Pittsburgh Gazette Times and The Pittsburgh Post.

Box office

Riding in Cars with Boys grossed $30.1 million in the United States and $35.7 million worldwide. Compared to its $47 million budget, the film was a box office bomb.[2]

Source: "Riding in Cars with Boys", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 7th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riding_in_Cars_with_Boys.

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References
  1. ^ "Riding in Cars with Boys (2001)". The Numbers. Retrieved August 24, 2021.
  2. ^ a b "Riding in Cars with Boys". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved November 12, 2022.
  3. ^ Riding in Cars With Boys (2001), Rotten Tomatoes, retrieved August 24, 2021
  4. ^ Ebert, Roger (October 19, 2001). "Riding in Cars with Boys". Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago, Illinois. Retrieved August 24, 2021.
  5. ^ Holden, Stephen (October 19, 2001). "A Girl's Charmed Life Detours Down a Bumpy Road". The New York Times. p. 22.
  6. ^ Puig, Claudia (October 18, 2001). "Charming Barrymore lightens Boys journey". USA Today. Retrieved August 24, 2021.
  7. ^ Schwarzbaum, Lisa (October 18, 2001). "Riding in Cars with Boys". Entertainment Weekly.
  8. ^ Kempley, Rita (October 19, 2001). "Riding in Cars: Gimme a Brake". The Washington Post. p. 37.
  9. ^ Guthmann, Edward (October 19, 2001). "'Riding in Cars' makes a bumpy, irritating trip". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved August 24, 2021.
  10. ^ Weiskind, Ron (October 19, 2001). "'Riding in Cars with Boys'". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved August 24, 2021.
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