note to screenwriters and self : when you hit the big time , and the studios come knocking for those scripts that are sitting in your bottom drawer , tell ? em all to hit the road .
gilligan wrote the arbitrarily-titled home fries ten years ago ; it was shelved until he found success as one of ” the took a second look at gilligan’s ” comedy ” – they read it again wearing rose-tinted glasses .
drew stars as sally , a dim ( but sweet ) , pregnant waitress at a small town burger joint located somewhere in the southern united states .
the father of her child is dead , the victim of a severe heart attack brought on by sadistic torture from his two stepsons – these flyboys scared him with their low-flying helicopter .
dorian ( wilson ) and angus ( busey ) were getting even for his philandering ways on behalf of their anguished mother ( o’hara ) .
trouble is , sally picked up some interference on her drive-thru headset , and angus worries she may have heard conversations that took place in the helicopter prior to the accidental killing .
so dorian goes undercover as a burger-flipper ; before you can say ” with cheese ” he falls for the mother-to-be .
too bad mom and angus have homicidal plans for sally .
does this sound like a movie you want to see ?
without a doubt , the best thing about home fries is barrymore ; at the risk of sounding sexist , she’s never looked better than here , as a curly redhead with twinkling eyes .
she is winning in a role that requires her to do absolutely nothing except look apple-cheek cute and gawk at wilson , her real-life boyfriend .
but the plot and the situations are so off-putting that nothing could save it .
this movie desperately wants to get mentioned in the same breath as the coen brothers , but home fries’ brand of laboured hipness would be foreign to geniuses like ethan and joel .
it’s raising arizona without babies , without charm , without laughs , without human characters , and without intelligence ; worst of all , it’s creepy .
what’s funny about threatening to gun down a pregnant woman with a machine gun ?
( unless the woman in question is a spice girl . )
take out the helicopters , the quasi-incestuous relationship between the mother and her sons ( it is absolutely illogical , within the movie’s framework , that dorian still lives with his mother and brother ) , and the scenes of murder ( attempted and otherwise ) , and what are you left with ?
the story of a single woman with child who works at a fast food joint ( but dreams of becoming a country singer ) .
that could turn out to be the most boring movie ever made , but it’d be better than home fries .