Skip the Drive-Thru Window
Review of Home Fries (1998)
Seen on 11 December 1998 by myself at the UA 64th Street for $4.50
Somewhere in Hollywood it was decided that mix-and-match genre screenplays area good idea. Action-adventure? Comedy? Psychodrama? Taut mystery? Screwball romance? Honestly, just pick two and leave it alone. But that is not what director Dean Parisot and writer Vince Gilligan decide to do. The only mistake avoided was casting Valerie Bertinelli, always good for an unintentional laugh.
The oddly named and aimless *Home Fries* suffers a series of coincidences and motivations that baffles the moviegoing imagination. What is intended to draw in the audience and sustain our interest is merely annoying. I must admit, I was curious to see where it was going, and in reviewing it, I must warn you that I will give it all away.
Sally (Drew Barrymore) gives her married lover Henry the heave-ho, even though she is pregnant. Cut to Henry run off the road by a mysterious black helicopter, and then scared to death when they fire a series of shells at him. Scared to death (heart condition), but untouched by the weapons. Then we discover that the two men flying the copter, Dorian and Angus (Luke Wilson and Jake Busey, both of whom have mostly made forgettable films) are the stepsons of the dead man. So it was not just a "prank gone wrong." Then there's the matter of the people who might have heard them over their radio communications. It seems that Sally heard them talking (but didn't know what they were saying) on her fast-food radio headset. She works at the local franchise of a burger chain. So naturally, Angus insists that Dorian get a job there and figure out if they need to *kill* her to protect their butts and Mom's (played by Catherine O'Hara whose comedic talents go completely untapped in favor of sheer frenzy).
But then Dorian falls in love with the very pregnant Sally. But the increasingly murderous Angus wants to kill someone. What a pickle (no bun intended) for Dorian. How does he keep Sally from getting killed without telling her that he killed the father of her unborn baby, who happened to be his stepfather?
*Home Fries* goes on *further* to dabble in the possibility of a class-struggle story, with the rich Dorian romancing the utterly poor Sally. It's all too stupid.
Meanwhile, thoughout, there is some absolutely splendid filming (kudos to Jerzy Zielinski), and a dynamite soundtrack. If they had just decided to film the Texas scenery with the Chris Isaak music, I would have loved that. It was just the plot and the dialogue that got in the way.
PS: That's Shelley Duvall as Sally's mother. She may not be dead, but her career obviously is.
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews