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88As a flawed but lovably lionhearted woman, Barrymore triumphantly comes of age as an actress.
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80It's Zahn's heartbreaking performance that drives Riding in Cars with Boys.
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75A film like this is refreshing and startling in the way it cuts loose from formula and shows us confused lives we recognize.
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75It's the kind of film -- like Diane Keaton's "Hanging Up" -- that even as it dissolves narratively, still makes you dissolve emotionally.
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75It's Barrymore's most ambitious role to date. She proves she is maturing as an actress.
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75Barrymore gives a performance that's nuanced, assured and captivating.
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75What emerges is a funny and sometimes aching movie that treads familiar dysfunctional family turf but still manages to eke out an emotionally toned balance.
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70It is somewhat repetitive, but it is also wonderfully acted, especially by Barrymore.
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63It's just another case of mourning over what might have been.
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60As the movie jumps back and forth in time, it displays an impressive cut-and-paste agility, skillfully interweaving humor and drama without tipping over into farce or soap opera.
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58When Barrymore finally gets mean, the movie finally gets good. Then comes another sing-along, dammit.
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50What's lacking is any sense of Beverly's brightness. She's supposedly smart, but she never displays a shred of intelligence.
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50Needs someone to roll down a window and let in some fresh air.
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50A messy, woefully uneven chick flick.
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50Whatever distinguished "Riding in Cars with Boys" the book certainly doesn't show up in the movie.
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50An article of faith for girls who just wanna have fun; only problem is that the movie doesn't go all the way.
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50It's a bitter story played for humor, in which a callous character is never quite allowed to see herself as such.
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42It's Zahn who truly conveys what Marshall and Barrymore are going for -- laughing through your tears.
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40Added bonuses: A nice selection of oldies on the soundtrack, and an amusing third-act cameo by Rosie Perez as Ray's second wife.
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40Thank God for Barrymore: When Beverly's water breaks and she looks down at her feet and cries, "This is so gross," you know how good this actress can be, and how good this movie might have been.
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40In many ways, Marshall and Barrymore are an equal match -- while both have a flair for the small touches that build a good comic scene, each lacks the complex layering of motive and emotion that make a human life believably real.
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40The result under Penny Marshall's direction is a film with genuinely serious intentions that falls considerably short of its intentions.
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40It's as if the filmmakers, having committed themselves to the book, fled from its essence, which is wildness.
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30Every scene is coated with Marshall's thumbprints, ultimately connecting into a manhandled, mangled, misshapen whole, its themes written out in thunderously obvious cues.
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30Mistakes self-pitying embitterment for carry-on endurance, and manages to have its causality both ways.
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30Buried under the miscalculations, the shamelessness, the off-putting and inappropriate broadness are sporadically visible souvenirs of a good project gone bad, hints of the unusual, bittersweet story that got away.
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30There's no dramatic trajectory here at all.
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30But by the end of the movie -- which seems to last longer than the Crusades -- all the good stuff has dissipated.
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30Hardly out of the driveway before director Penny Marshall loses control.
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25They try to make Beverly adorable, and the movie comes off strained and dishonest as a result.
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10An overlong compendium of Oprah moments meant to move and inspire, even if, by the end, it's too exhausted with itself to offer up a single authentic tear or revelation.