Méli-mélo

Home Fries is a fantastic movie, but the marketing scheme behind it all had little bearing in regard to the actual movie. If you saw the trailers or commercials, you'd have thought the movie was a romantic comedy. The relationship between Luke Wilson and Drew Barrymore's characters plays only a small part in plot, and even then it's not the type of interaction you'd see in a romantic comedy.

This flick is pure dark humor. The near-incestuous relationship existing between Dorian's brother and mother is both odd and extremely amusing. It's definitely not the type of movie you'd expect to see from the way it's been presented. Kudos to the casting director. Each part was cast extremely well.

Telling you the plot would kinda take away some of the suprising charm of this movie. Basically, the Drew Barrymore character is supposed to be killed by the son of the dead man she was sleeping with. But the guy starts to like her. There are several other twists thrown into the story. The screenplay by Vince Gilligan of the X-Files is unpredictable and the dialogue isn't stale like in so many other Hollywood films. Great performances by all.

I thought this movie was absolutely fabulous. Nothing at all like the trailer suggests (which is EXTREMELY rare nowadays) Go see it, Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson are great.

This was a black comedy that unfolded over the first 30 minutes of the film, revealing one surprise relationship after another, until you realize that all the major characters are related in surprising ways. My daughter and I watched this together and laughed out loud quite a bit. Luke Wilson did a great job as the moony eyed helicopter pilot who falls for Drew's character. Drew did a good job as a confused but sweet pregnant girl who works at a burger joint in somewhere in small town America. Jake Busey looks a whole lot like his dad, and chewed a lot of furniture for this role, which was rather one dimensional. Catherine O'Hara is at her best playing this quirky mom. (during one funny scene, the older boy asks her if it's true that she liked the other son better..."I love you both, she says, but the difference is only this (puts her fingers an inch apart) much!LOL!!!) If you don't enjoy dark humor, this will not amuse you. It also had an ending that made us go "awww"...it was almost as if they weren't sure how to end this one, though. Overall, it wasn't a bad film.

This looks like a case of a classic schizophrenic Hollywood movie--too dark-humored for fans of romantic comedy, not nearly outrageous enough for those looking for that quality. (You may get a little nervous, though, when a shotgun-wielding character walks into a fast-food restaurant full of kids.) Consequently it will end up alienating a lot of viewers looking for the one type of film or the other. Most of the characters aren't very enjoyable to watch, with the noted exception of Drew Barrymore in the lead. I was disappointed that Catherine O'Hara's part wasn't any better--she could have really livened the movie up if her character had been a little more forceful.

Despite all the problems, there was still something left to like here, and I would give it a positive recommendation, but just barely. On second thought, recommending this movie to someone would be a risky proposition, but I thought that overall it was marginally successful.