Riding the Bus with My Sister

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!

Beth is mentally challenged and can't hold a job, but she is able to live by herself, with some help from her father. Her favorite activity is riding the various buses in her city, and she considers many of the bus drivers to be friends (Eugene is an exception), as well as a number of passengers. Some of the passengers, though, find her annoying and wish she would get a job and stop living off the government. Beth also has a boyfriend Jesse who is a lot like her but can work. Beth is white and Jesse is black, but this doesn't seem to be shown as a problem.

Beth's sister Rachel has a fast-paced career as a big-city fashion photographer. She has to put her life on hold when the girls' father dies, because someone has to make sure Beth is taken care of. Otherwise Beth will end up in a group home, which she doesn't want to do again. There is a brother and a stepmother (and a mother who has long since lost any chance of reviving a relationship with her daughters), but Rachel ends up having to take the responsibility. This puts her relationship with her boyfriend at risk.

I find Rosie O'Donnell annoying when she is being herself or playing a character like her. Beth was ten times worse, at first. But seeing how much almost everyone cared about her made me feel the same way, and I soon felt bad whenever Beth was mistreated. O'Donnell effectively showed not only the normal behavior of someone mentally disabled, but she did quite well in unusual situations. And she carefully showed a tic that Beth often had before speaking.

Andie MacDowell also did quite well as the flawed but appealing character of Rachel. Rachel could be impatient and somewhat selfish, but her concern for her sister won out. D. W. Moffett also stood out as Beth's favorite bus driver Rick.

Some unsettling but effective flashbacks to the girls' early life showed the events that helped lead to who they became.

Overall, this was well done.

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.

This movie is based on a biography (book) by the same name. If you're reading this review, you should go read the book whether or not you have seen the movie. Once you've read the book, you can better judge the screen adaptation. It will give you an idea of why Rosie acted the way she did. Beth's mannerisms and speech patterns were similar to those portrayed in the book. Her boyfriend is portrayed similarly, perhaps a little more introverted. Someone else has written in their review that this is a movie about autism. Beth is developmentally disabled in some way, but neither the book nor the movie ever specifically mention autism or Asperger's disorder. The sisters, bus drivers, and other characters in this movie are all real. Enjoy your reading.

Rosie O'Donnell can act. She was great as the wiseacre in A League of Their Own and passable in a similar role in the sequel to Stakeout. Since I'm being generous, her talk show was even entertaining at times, if you go in for that celebrity-fawning type of thing. But this performance is so embarrassingly awful you might question whether she is indeed acting or if she has been struck with what her character suffers from. How else to explain her choices? Mismatched pastel Chuck Taylors with a Tweety Bird T-shirt? A voice somewhere between Pee-wee Herman and Yoda, but without the likability? If Rosie really wanted to do something for the mentally challenged, she would have stuck to executive producing and hired an actual mentally challenged actor. It's not like they could do any worse. From the Forrest Gump pose on a bench on the DVD cover to the Rainmanesque quips, she seems to be changing her characterization every scene. And let's not forget who directed? John Huston's very own daughter. I mean Anjelica Huston must have watched her dad's films. She was practically married to Jack Nicholson so she must have watched his films. Do you not think just a little bit of that talent might have rubbed off on her? This is clearly ego run amok. High-profile celebrities trying "to make a difference" but just demonstrating how woefully out-of-touch they are.