Riding In Cars With Boys

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

She's Catholic, small-town, the daughter of the police chief--none of which prevents Bev (Drew Barrymore) from getting knocked up by the wrong boy (Steve Zahn, playing dumb but sweet-natured) at age 15. The rest of the movie is about her trying to realize her ambitions (college, writing books, ensuring her son's love) while dealing with her husband's fecklessness, her boy's fractiousness, her own foot-in-mouth feistiness. It is somewhat repetitive, but it is also wonderfully acted, especially by Barrymore. Like the movie itself, she's neither self-pitying nor self-aggrandizing--just real, wry as she deals with a hard-knock life.

--R.S.