Director: Penny Marshal

Cast: Drew Barrymore, Steve Zahn, Adam Garcia, Brittany Murphy, James Woods, Lorraine Bracco

Genre: Drama/Biography/Comedy

Rating: PG-13

Relase Date: 19 October, 2001

Editor's Review:
A teenage girl with a bastard child – a drug and alcohol prone lover – overbearing parents – lost chance of a good education… Material worthy of a good melodrama and few tears you would say….at least that’s what a whole life’s worth of typical masala kollywood prepared me for.

The movie impressed me by its ordinariness. It has sufficient and more material to preach and philosophize about but the makers don’t go there.

The character played by Drew is a girl, woman and mother with flaws. She is a troubled teen who believes her parents don’t love her enough and so gets pregnant, as a wife she does not care for her home or husband and as a mother she does not care for her son. No judgments are made about these lacks. Instead we find characters actually pandering to her. Even when confronted with her shortcomings she is rather bewildered than sorry. She has her moments when she tries to rehabilitate her husband and when she decides to take care of her son. The scene where she promises to look after Jason, is in all its melodrama still funny. This is why I love this movie.

The men in the movie are atypical too. The man of the house is a drug/alcohol-crazed moron. His saving grace, he loves his woman. He loves her so much that he actually comes up with a cockamamie theory that he needed just the right amount of drugs to keep him steady and if he got it, he could continue to be the good father/husband he is. When the lady refuses there are no shouting matches. Just a matter of fact acceptance of his predicament and he leaves with a tooth of his son as memory.

The son is another male character that impressed me. He has accepted the fact that his mother needs him and he does not worry too much about it. He did it when he was 10 or so and continued to do it when he was 20 and college was waiting for him. When it was time to choose he chooses his mother over a loving girlfriend.

I usually like to categorize movies as pro women or anti them. This one left me confused. Drew’s character was not the kind of lead woman you would find being portrayed in a movie. She did not care for anybody but herself. There is a slow realization and she learns to be responsible. For the first time a woman is shown as not a born good wife, not a congenital mother but as a person who learns being both. This is the real woman. The men too surprised me. I love to bitch about the men in movies. The men in this movie were different. One was willing to give up everything in his own way for the love of his life. Another willingly takes up responsibility of a woman who is traditionally supposed to take care of him. I am yet to see one like these in real life. The possibility of his existing that this movie shows, gives me immense pleasure.