Home Fries (1998)

Very Cool!!!

One of my all time favorites.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Home Fries (1998): Dir: Dean Parisot / Cast: Drew Barrymore, Luke Wilson, Jake Busey, Catherine O'Hara, Shelley Duvall: Intriguing satire that exaggerates in its conclusion. Title regards Drew Barrymore's job at a fast food restaurant while symbolizing her pregnancy or the two sons corrupted to kill her. The baby's father is married so his wife's two sons scare him into a heart attack. They suspect that Barrymore may be a witness so one of them goes undercover and of course, fall in love. The restaurant provides an interesting location plus there are numerous plot twists throughout. Directed by Dean Parisot as a dark comedy that works more on its innovation than humour. Sympathetic performance by Barrymore who is caught as a potential single mother unknowing that she is a target. Luke Wilson and Jake Busey play the sons of a menacing woman played by Catherine O'Hara. Wilson is drawn to Barrymore and resorts to protecting her while Busey becomes psychotic and desperate. The result of this is violent and stays from any sort of humour. O'Hara steals her moments as their crazed mother out to oversee the fine touches of a murder. Shelley Duvall is also featured in a small supporting role to remind us of her early glory days of greatness. Very different comedy that satires the dysfunctional family within a screenplay that serves up more than fast food. Score: 8 / 10

(spoilers) Not so much a purely comedic as a family drama movie. IMO at the heart of the story is a conflict of loyalty for the two brothers (Luke Wilson, Jake Busey), in terms of how much they owe to their mother (Catherine O'Hara). Things become complicated when one of the brothers (Luke Wilson) falls for a girl (Drew Barrymore) that his mother does not approve of. The result is a story in which there is a tangled inter-familial conflict, in which it is not always clear whose side one is on, or even who everyone is. The story unfolds in a Southern environment. Drew Barrymore was sorta the poster girl, although having seen the movie, I'm not sure that she was really the lead, although she was certainly one of the four central characters and is probably the female lead. She and Luke Wilson and the others put in good performances; I thought that the acting was well done. It's a pretty solid little film that probably deserved more success than it received. (8/10)

Let us now meditate on this thing known as "the crappy movie." We'll just skip the "medium-crappy-movie," which Hollywood provides every week, in deference to its big brother "the seriously, atrociously crappy movie"; the kind of movie that leaves you in a state of wonderment, which then becomes the bewildered lobby conversation that follows the question, "What the hell were they thinking?" as you walk numb to your car.To find some way to pay this heinous movie a compliment, it IS amazing that something can issue from Hollywood that hasn't been written by a machine and measured against a checklist for absolute genre conformity, however...House Fries is an awesomely terrible movie. Let's start with the basics. The movie was fished to audiences as a standard vehicle to sell you the charms of two young actors. In this case, Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson. Although the preview suggested a romantic comedy, you'll be damned if you can actually name what this baroque, convoluted excresence is.Catherine O'Hara has her two military helicopter-pilot sons buzz her cheating husband to scare him, for cheating on her with Drew Barrymore. The husband is successfully scared (to death) and Drew Barrymore (coincidence #1) is an earwitness through her headset at a burger joint. Lady Macbeth (O'Hara) puts Luke Wilson into action to see what Drew knows. Along the way Drews Burger joint hosts a crazy gunman incident that might turn out like the McDonalds at San Yisidro, but all ends well when he turns out to be Drews own trashy dad (coincidence #2). That's comedy gold! I don't think I'm even twenty minutes into the movie. It continues in this vein. This movie jumps it's tracks and skids along lawns and sidewalks crushing cotton candy vendors and baby carts. This movie may actually dethrone "Nothing But Trouble" in the bad movie category as the worst thing ever committed to film.Catherine O'Hara or Jake Busey get my vote as the most awful of many heinous elements in the movie. She's a comedy-troupe veteran trying to play a paranoid dramatic role, or maybe it's just a massively failed comedy role.Although the absurd developments and coincidences that occur here suggest a governmental (or at least military-level scandal), the movie plays them all out in TV movie of the week, would-be dramatic, living-room vignettes. Suffice it to say, Home Fries is not a comedy, and it does not operate at the level, genre or volume which it's folksy, corn-pone title suggests.You are likely to get as much enjoyment from following a sick dog down a street until the dog provides you with an opportunity to step in something nasty.

I don't know what exactly went wrong with this film; I guess they wanted to make a comedy, and they couldn't figure out whether to make it a romantic comedy or a black comedy. It could perhaps have been both, but that would require for it to start out as both. It starts out only as a black comedy, and the romance just surfaces from out of nowhere about half an hour into the film. Romance can add to a film, but with some black comedies(including this one) the plot is too far-fetched for you to really care about the characters, and romance in a movie is empty if you have no one to care for. What's left is just some unoriginal black comedy gags that seem worn out; people who should care about the dead guy but don't, the guy talking sense being mistaken as the crazy one, the ceremony that should be silent and holy, but is constantly interrupted... I could go on. We've seen it all before, often done better than here. The plot, while being extremely far-fetched, is fairly original(as far as I know) and it does allow for at least a few funny scenes. Too many of them just seem recycled. The acting is not bad, in fact it's better than what the script is worth. The script is fairly badly written, especially with the randomly thrown-in romance. Many of the characters seem like stereotypical cliches too. All in all, the film could have been far better, had the plot been more believable, the romance better worked in, the script better written, the material more original and the film overall less predictable. It has its moments, but it fails to entertain throughout the runtime, which it should be able to, as it's only 90 minutes. It does have a few pretty good laughs though. It's just barely entertaining enough to sit through, and it's not the worst way to spend an hour and a half, if you've got absolutely nothing better to do. 5/10