Riding the Bus with My Sister

Anjelica Huston has given enough good acting performances and directed at least one very good film (Bastard out of Carolina), that she can perhaps be forgiven for this. But there is no forgiving Rosie and Andie, who give two of the most godawful performances ever put on film. You'd think Rosie would win the bad acting competition hands-down, since she has the over-the-top, tug-at-your-heartstrings role and plays it with such zero-talent gusto; but, if possible, Andie is worse in that expressionless, monotone, "but she's pretty" way that somehow keeps getting her cast in movies. Unintentional laughs throughout...a real pleasure if you throw out all expectations and just revel in the awfulness.

Unfortunately the directing gene was not passed down from John Huston to his daughter Anjelica Huston, who clearly has no idea what the hell she is doing and can't modulate Rosie O'Donnell's performance from reaching heights so over the top, it soars through the stratosphere. Hallmark films don't scream quality, but this scrapes some truly horrible depths. The film can never rise above Rosie O'Donnell, who belts out every line and seems to be channeling the worst stereotypes of mentally disabled people, that the film ends up feeling like a parody of the disabled. It's like she ate a handful of amphetamines before each scene and was let loose, never being told to bring it down about 50 notches and that she's making a fool of herself. The script is derivative nonsense, but it's her monstrous performance that makes the film worth viewing for condescending laughs - without Rosie O'Donnell this film would never have become the morbid curiosity it is.

This was basically your standard Lifetime network kind of drama, with one, horrid exception: Rosie O'Donnell. I hear she produced this movie, which I suppose is the best explanation for why no one on the production acted to remove her for another more qualfied actress.

Evidently Rosie subscribes to the "worst stereotypes of mentally handicapped persons" school of acting. She balls up her fists and hold them close to my chest, like some gigantic flightless bird. She juts her lower chin out, her face frozen with about as much depth of feeling as an extra in a George Romero "Living Dead" movie...and her voice. It is not an exaggeration to say, if it were used against Iraqi prisoners, it would be at the top of the Human Rights violations list. This combination croak / screech - Gilford Godfrey, part Pee-Wee Herman, and part "Which Way Did He Go, George?" - is in fact a talent; neither my wife nor I could actually reproduce this noise she was making. Mentally challenged folk do not look like this, do not talk like this. Her performance insults them.

She is an insult to acting. Watching 10 seconds of her insulted my intelligence as well as assaulted my senses. The actors who worked with her should have their therapy bills covered by the studio.

I would normally dismiss a film like this as tear-jerking rubbish but I have to admit this film grabbed me and held me captive almost entirely due to the fantastic performance by Rosie O'Donnell! Who would have thought?!

The movie does have a sad tone to it at times too; I was particularly saddened to see Andie McDowell with a pot belly in the beginning of the film where she is exercising on the treadmill. I guess things must change in life as time goes on.

Rosie steals the show though. Her emphatic "I'm a person!" statements, her faces, her body language, her use of her voice for emphasis were all parts of what adds up to a world-class performance. Curly Howard could not have done better were he a female actor. The scene at the beach where she is jumping up and down, waving her arms and yelling had me laughing out loud, and nearly all her interactions with the people on any of the bus rides were hilarious. Bravo!

The rest of the characters were almost entirely meaningless, though they didn't detract from the movie itself. Place Rosie and Andie as their respective characters in any situation and you've got a runaway success; the real tragedy is that this film placed the two characters in an evening TV drama -- a genre that virtually guarantees the audience would be ill-equipped to appreciate them.

If you want to laugh out loud, watch this film; it's among the funniest non-comedies out there at this point!

I found myself torn when I was choosing a rating for this film. Of course, the easy choice (the one I went with) is to give it a 1. It is, after all, an awful, awful, awful movie. However, if you view it in the proper mindset, you may not have a better two hours watching a movie than you will watching Riding the Bus with My Sister.

First, let me explain that it's not a garden variety "let's make fun of people that are different than us" type of enjoyment. In fact, that shouldn't really be enjoyable unless you are in a room of people who know you are kidding. If you TRULY derive joy from making fun of people who are different from you, then you might want to change a few things about yourself. What makes this movie fun is that you are making fun of two HORRIBLE actors delivering two HORRIBLE performances.

Now, to expect brilliance from either Rosie O'Donnell or Andie McDowell is probably akin to Sisyphus' struggle--you're going to be disappointed repeatedly when you don't find brilliance. This film might just be the best example that Andie McDowell's best acting was in make-up commercials and Rosie O'Donnell's best acting is done with the TV on mute.

I'll start with Rosie. I believe I read somewhere that her performance sounded like an Asian comedian doing a horrible impression of a combination of Pee Wee Herman and Adam Sandler. That's pretty close, only without comedic intent that such an impression would carry with it. What makes her performance laughable is the thought that I had while watching it--she is probably proud of this performance. There is literally only one line she delivers that is NOT delivered in the same manner as all the others. Most are given with a word screamed somewhere in the middle of the sentence while she gives herself an intentional facial contortion that makes her seem like she is making fun of mentally handicapped people. She also never stops rocking or moving her feet. And her hands remain in the same position the entire film. It's a farce. I look at it and I think, "How could anyone be seriously moved by this?" But that was clearly the intent. Failure by Rosie on every possible front.

Andie McDowell. Well, she is fine (and by "fine" I mean she doesn't single handedly ruin the film) when she is only asked to be mildly attractive with a southern drawl. If you ask her to do more than that, she is going to let you down. Well, they asked her to do a whole lot more than that in this film. She failed. Repeatedly. Egregiously. I am in the camp that thinks her performance is even worse than Rosie, because at least Rosie was being different than Rosie is in real life. This was Andie McDowell as we have always seen her. Trouble is, in Groudhog Day she is required to be mildly attractive with a southern drawl, in this movie she is required to have a character arc. Her arc goes from acting like she's tired (which is my favorite of her scenes. Watch how you can almost tangibly see her say "what do I do when I am tired. I know. I yawn and stretch.") to saying she loves her sister. The character NEVER changes. She reacts to these two events with the same exact reactions. Inflection, apparently, is something she thinks you can cover up with L'Oreal.

I could go on, but what's the point. These are the two central performances in the film and they are laughably bad from start to finish. That's the key, though. They are LAUGHABLY bad. So watch this movie and laugh at it. Don't feel bad, either. You're not laughing at people who are different than you. You are laughing at AWFUL actresses, although I HOPE they are different from you as well.