home fries movie review

"Home Fries" is the kind of movie where a man is frightened to death by a helicopter, dies sitting bolt upright on a park bench, and one of his killers wants to pose with him. What kind of movie does that make it? I'm not sure. It has elements of sweet romance and elements of macabre humor, and divides its characters between the two--except for a turn by Catherine O'Hara that seems serenely astride both worlds.

The movie stars Drew Barrymore , perky and plucky, as Sally, a drive-thru clerk at the Burger-Matic. We see her in the opening scene, serving a vanilla shake to a middle-aged man who whispers that he has finally told his wife he was having an affair. "Did you tell her about this?" asks Sally, standing up, so the creep can see how pregnant she is. He offers her a ride home and hints at other pastimes. "I don't need a ride home," she snaps. "I need a father for my baby." It is all going to get a lot more complicated. Later that night, the man will be frightened to death. We'll meet two helicopter pilots: Dorian ( Luke Wilson ) and Angus ( Jake Busey ). The police will break the news to the man's widow, Mrs. Lever (O'Hara). And then (spoiler warning), we discover that Dorian and Angus are her sons by an earlier marriage, that the dead man was her current husband and that she encouraged them to scare him.

The sons have reason to suspect that their radio conversations in the helicopter were overheard by Sally on her Burger-Matic headphones, so Dorian gets a job at the drive-in to spy on her, and falls in love, little realizing that he is the killer of the father of her unborn child. Are you following this? They begin to fall in love, but as full implications of their romance begin to emerge, Sally tells Dorian, "You can't be the father and the brother at the same time. That's the kind of thing that messes kids up." I know, Dorian would actually be her child's stepfather and half-stepbrother, but Sally is as confused as everyone else.

The movie requires Barrymore and Wilson to play their characters straight most of the time, while Catherine O'Hara mixes sweetness with irony and Jake Busey chews the scenery with those marvelous teeth. Seeing the movie for the first time at the Toronto Film Festival in September, I found parts of it amusing, but doubted the whole. When I saw it again, I was surprised to find I liked it better the second time. I suspect the barrage of twists and revelations was off-putting at first, distracting from the wit in O'Hara's performance and the sweetness in Barrymore's. The first time, you think the movie is about the plot, and the second time you realize it's about the characters.

This is one of O'Hara's best screen performances. The former Second City star is sweetness and reason as she manipulates her two luggy sons and brazenly acts her way through meetings with the cops and her late husband's young lover. She is so calm, so cool, she implies scary depths that she never has to reveal.

Barrymore, who is emerging as a versatile star, is wise to play Sally on a more or less realistic level, focusing on her pregnancy and newfound romance, and remaining oblivious (when possible) to the intrigue around her. She avoids the actor's mistake of knowing more about the screenplay than her character would know.

The movie is the feature debut of Dean Parisot , from a screenplay that I gather Vince Gilligan found in his bottom drawer after " The X-Files " made him bankable. It might have seemed fresher 10 years ago, before this kind of ironic labyrinthine plotting became common, but he has a sharp eye for characters and introduces Sally's parents ( Shelley Duvall and Lanny Flaherty ) during an apparent fast-food hostage crisis that dissolves into a marital spat before our eyes.

"Home Fries" is not a great movie, and as much as I finally enjoyed it, I'm not sure it's worth seeing two times just to get into the rhythm. More character and less plot might have been a good idea. But the actors are tickled by their characters and have fun with them, and so I did, too.

And I liked the wicked human comedy in scenes like the one where the blustering, dopey Angus, asks, "Mom, what'd you mean when you said Dorian was your favorite?" "Oh, Angus," she says, with fondness and exasperation, "I love you both. A difference of this much." She holds her thumb and forefinger two inches apart, knowing that when your mother likes your brother more, an inch is as good as a mile.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Drew Barrymore as Sally
• Luke Wilson as Dorian
• Shelley Duvall as Mrs. Jackson
• Catherine O'Hara as Mrs. Lever
• Jake Busey as Angus

Directed by

• Dean Parisot
• Vince Gilligan

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Home Fries Reviews

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Sep 7, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 12, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 12, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 2, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 8, 2004

Drew is cute as always and so's Wilson

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 12, 2003

A dark comedy that's artificially dark and is never very funny.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 13, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 19, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 16, 2003

There's a good movie somewhere in here trying to escape... the audience can relate to that desire.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 25, 2003

Drew comes through for us. Her easy charm and winning smile put us back on track, giving us something familiar and wonderful to cling to.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 2, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 30, 2002

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 19, 2002

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 1, 2001

What's interesting is pretty much unintentional, centering in the film's performances, which are excellent indeed.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Full Review | Original Score: high 0 out of -4..+4 | Jan 1, 2000

The home fries are too salty for my taste.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jan 1, 2000

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Jan 1, 2000

• Cast & crew

User reviews

What does it want to be--black comedy or romantic comedy?

• Jan 4, 2000

A Cute Black Romantic Comedy?

• great_sphinx_42
• Jun 8, 1999

Charming Characters can't save a dark script. ** out of ****

• Apr 22, 1999

An Extremely Funny and Original Movie. A must see.

• tarantinoboy
• Sep 23, 1998

Fried the TV.

• OllieSuave-007
• Mar 3, 2014

Now that's bad! (jaw hanging open...)

• Feb 3, 2006

Drew Needs To Be More Discerning With Her Scripts

• ccthemovieman-1
• Dec 12, 2007

This Movie Is Much Better than the Marketing of it would have you Believe.

• Aug 1, 2000

Overrated. It's actually wooden and clichéd, and artificially dark.

• Aug 23, 1999

Black comedy with a little sugar thrown in

• Jul 29, 2002
• Apr 6, 1999

completely original

• Thats_MISTER_Paz_to_you
• Dec 12, 1998

Enjoyable Romantic/Comedy/Action movie!

• imyorehuckleberry
• Apr 20, 2003

Give This Movie A 2nd Chance!!!

• Jun 10, 1999

nothing like the trailer.

• Jul 14, 2002

awkward and not quite working

• SnoopyStyle
• Sep 2, 2015
• ShortCuteBlonde
• Sep 21, 2002

Such A Shame.

• Sep 7, 2001

Great performances in this quirky comedy.

• Dec 3, 1998

likable Barrymore elevates this somewhat odd movie

• Jul 8, 2005

Mis-marketed, yet enjoyable movie

• Apr 18, 1999

Terrible, terrible, terrible...and worse

• Mar 1, 1999

An interesting, unique movie with entertaining ideas.

• Jan 4, 1999

Story is ridiculous but Barrymore does well

• Jun 1, 2000

Slightly better than watching moss grow.

• Dec 1, 1998

More from this title

More to explore, recently viewed.

"Momma Doesn’t Know Best"

What You Need To Know:

(Ro, PaPaPa, C, LLL, V, S, AA, D, M) Light romantic worldview with strong pagan elements & a Christian funeral; 22 obscenities & 6 profanities; brief but moderate violence including threats with guns, shooting blanks & skirmishes; implied adultery resulting in pregnancy & flirtatious touching; no nudity; alcohol use & drunkenness; smoking; and, extreme family dysfunction & images of corpses.

More Detail:

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.

You wouldn't know it from the title and Warner's young-love trailer, but "Home Fries," starring Drew Barrymore, is a black comedy about a latter-day Ma Barker who cajoles her grown boys into killing their philandering stepdad.

By Glenn Lovell

Glenn Lovell

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You wouldn’t know it from the title and Warner’s young-love trailer, but “Home Fries,” starring Drew Barrymore, is a black comedy about a latter-day Ma Barker who cajoles her grown boys into killing their philandering stepdad. Gonzo elements are kept to a minimum in favor of more macabre moments that should leave target audience scratching its collective head. Barrymore’s profile will get this one open, but nasty tone and zero chemistry between star and her leading man, Luke Wilson, will mean fast-food shelf life.

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Texas-set pic — produced by Barry Levinson and Lawrence Kasdan, among others — opens with so much thunder and testosterone that ticket-holders will wonder if they wandered into the wrong theater. Setup has weekend warrior Cobra helicopter pilots Dorian (Wilson) and Angus (Jake Busey) strafing the woods at night as a lone man runs for his life. The guy is scared stiff. So much for the comedy quotient.

Popular on Variety

How does Sally (Barrymore), a pregnant cashier at the local Burger-Matic, figure in this? A landslide of contrivance and coincidence pulls it all together: The fly-by victim was the father of Barrymore’s baby. His out-for-vengeance wife (Catherine O’Hara) deployed her boys to scare the two-timer to death. Complications ensue: Burger-Matic and Cobra headsets are on the same radio frequency, and Barrymore and co-workers may have heard all.

Angus’ harebrained scheme: Have Dorian infiltrate the eatery as a new employee and figure out who knows what. As Dorian falls for Sally (no one initially knows she was stepdad’s mistress), Mama Lever (O’Hara) and wild-eyed Angus plot further mayhem. Everything is resolved (well, thrown together, anyway) after a noisy return visit by Angus in a Cobra attack ship, which Dorian tells Sally was dubbed “the muttering death” by Vietcong.

Such left-field asides sum up what’s wrong with the picture, a pitch-black comedy masquerading as yet another playful, teen-oriented Barrymore vehicle, which WB is calling “an off-center romantic comedy.”

Helmer Dean Parisot, an Oscar winner in the live-action short category who makes his feature bow, shows a definite flair for macabre touches: He has almost as much fun with the corpses as Hitchcock did with the title character in “The Trouble With Harry.” In one scene, the investigating officer poses with a body; in another, Dorian borrows a jacket from a funeral-home stiff. Writer Vince Gilligan lets drop, via Angus, a reference to the “Lamb to the Slaughter” episode of the “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” TV anthology.

While plot elements don’t add up, film’s energy level remains high, and oddball ensemble brings to mind a classic of this type, Jonathan Demme’s “Citizens Band.” Barrymore gives the feisty single-mom role her all, even if she always appears to be in a more serious slice-of-life. Busey continues carving a name for himself as Hollywood’s best wacko. O’Hara, usually squandered on dutiful-wife roles, has fun overplaying the grief-stricken (for appearance’s sake) widow. Pained-looking Wilson is strictly of the Ricky Nelson School of Acting.

Shelley Duvall, in an all-too- rare movie role, turns up as Sally’s chain-smoking, trailer-trash mom, and Lanny Flaherty plays her redneck dad, who, in one not-so-riotous scene, holds Burger-Matic patrons hostage. Kim Robillard and Daryl Mitchell have brief but funny bits as Burger-Matic’s out-of-it manager and “product-assembly” expert, respectively.

Tech credits throughout are ultra-efficient, always overpowering the flimsy excuse for a plot. Cobra attacks make full use of wall-quaking Dolby Digital/DTS and, like much else here, are better suited to a Simpson-Bruckheimer assault.

• Production: A Warner Bros. release of a Mark Johnson/Baltimore Pictures/Kasdan Pictures production. Produced by Johnson, Barry Levinson, Lawrence Kasdan, Charles Newirth. Executive producer, Romi Lassally. Directed by Dean Parisot. Screenplay, Vince Gilligan.
• Crew: Camera (Technicolor), Jerzy Zielinski; editor, Nicholas C. Smith; music, Rachel Portman; production designer, Barry Robison; art director, Phil Dagort; set designer, Andrew Menzies; costume designer, Jill Ohanneson; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS), Jennifer Murphy; associate producer, Susann Jones; assistant director, Michael Waxman; casting, Jill Greenberg Sands, Debra Zane. Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Contemporary World Cinema), Sept. 17, 1998. Running time: 93 MIN.
• With: Sally - Drew Barrymore Dorian - Luke Wilson Mrs. Lever - Catherine O'Hara Angus - Jake Busey Mrs. Jackson - Shelley Duvall Billy - Kim Robillard Roy - Daryl Mitchell Red - Lanny Flaherty Henry Lever - Chris Ellis Sheriff - Blue Deckert Camera (Technicolor), Jerzy Zielinski; editor, Nicholas C. Smith; music, Rachel Portman; production designer, Barry Robison; art director, Phil Dagort; set designer, Andrew Menzies; costume designer, Jill Ohanneson; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS), Jennifer Murphy; associate producer, Susann Jones; assistant director, Michael Waxman; casting, Jill Greenberg Sands, Debra Zane. Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Contemporary World Cinema), Sept. 17, 1998. Running time: 93 MIN.

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