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By Dann GireDaily Herald Film Critic“Boys on the Side” begins as a road movie in which three women, strangers to each other, begin a cross-country trip together headed for San Diego.They get to know each other. Trust each other. Finally, depend on each other. They become, for lack of a better word, a family.It’s a simple story, but one filled with so many unexpected, instant detours and eccentric, evolving characters that “Boys on the Side” takes on a sheen of painful reality.By the end, these three complex, vulnerable, strong and very human women are as much our friends as anybody else’s. This is why the second death in the drama, a scene of gentle music and quiet shadows constructed with eloquent subtly, has the power to make us feel a tremendous sense of loss.Whoopi Goldberg stars as Jane DeLuca, a New York musician and self-proclaimed lesbian who’s ready for a change of pace after everything in her low-paving life falls apart. She accepts an offer to drive with a woman to San Diego.She’s Robin Nickerson (Marv-Louise Parker), a sheltered, persnickety, tightly controlled real estate broker who loves Carpenters music. The streetwise Jane isn’t sure the partnership can survive the trip. After all, she prefers Janis Joplin.Along the way, the pair stops off to see Jane’s friend Alex (Drew Barrymore), a woman locked in a bad relationship with an abusive guy named Nick. When Nick resists, Alex bops him on the head with a baseball bat.The three tie him up and take off for San Diego.Movie★ ★ ★ ViScreenplay by Don Roos Produced by Amon Milchan. Steven Reuther and Hebert Ross Directed by Herbert Ross A Warner Bros, release Rated R (language, sexual situations) 118 minutes.Cast:Jane DeLuca................Whoopi GoldbergRobin Nickerson.......Mary-Louise ParkerHolly...............................Drew BarrymoreAlex....................................James RemarIn “Boys on the Side,” three women (Whoopi Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore) come together on a roadtrip and discover a friendship that transcends their problems.■“Boys” does make one very subtle, key point about AIDS. Jane freely passes a beer between her and Robin without so much as wiping off the bottle tip. A kindly San Diego bartender (James Remar in a rare role as a nice guy) kisses her passionately, knowing she’s HIV infected.Barrymore is particularly winningas the ditz who loves men. She plays well opposite Matthew McConaugh-ey’s square-as-Barney Fife police officer, appropriately named Abe Lincoln, who proves his love for Holly in a way so profoundly bizarre, it must have been inspired by a realevent.Despite its bent toward women’s relationships, “Boys on the Side” is mostly about the gift of family, not the conventional structure given the “family values” seal of approval, but the de facto families that people — friends — form.Who are they?As Elaine tells her daughter Robin, they are the people who help you, stand up for you and fight foryou.“And,” she says with the wisdom that only moms seem to acquire, “they are never who you expect them to be.”There, Robin reveals her deepest secret. She has AIDS, apparently obtained from an affair with a New York bartender. Her trip to San Diego isn’t for business or for health. It’s a sad pilgrimage to the one happy time in her past when she and her family went on a vacation there.In most movies like this, the characters seldom stretch beyond their stock conventions.Here, Jane transcends her streetwise smart aleck. She even starts singing Caipenters stuff.The straight-arrow Robin develops a capacity for flexibility and forgiveness, not just for Jane, but for her estranged mother Elaine (Anita Gillette) whom she has ignored for many years.As for Barrymore s daffy, beguiling bimbo with a heart of gold ... some people don’t change that much, I guess.Boys on the Side” is a terrific movie, made all the more remarkable because men directed and wrote it, respected Hollywood vet Herbert Ross and Don Roos.Roos pumps plenty of heart into his script, but he still hits rough turf when slides in some clumsy, didactic speechmaking about the unique nature of women’s relationships.Wisely, “Boys” sidesteps the irrelevant politics and specifics of Jane’s lesbianism..“Boys” also avoids the usual treatment of AIDS as a soapbox issue. Here, the disease becomes a piece of baggage that a character, on top of everything else in her life, must deal with as best she can.
Newspaper Details
Arlington Heights Daily Herald Suburban Chicago
Arlington Heights, Illinois, US
Fri, Feb 03, 1995
Page 85
Full Page
Clipped by
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USA 13 Mar 2023
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