Grade: C+

Verdict: Despite some good intentions and some good acting, it may make you carsick.

Details: Starring Drew Barrymore, Steve Zahn and Brittany Morgan. Directed by Penny Marshall. Rated PG-13 for language, sex scenes and drug use. Two hours.

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Review: Penny Marshall and star Drew Barrymore don't know what kind of movie they want “Riding in Cars With Boys” to be. A cautionary tale about teen pregnancy in a pre-pro-choice decade? A funny, spunky coming-of-age story? A nostalgia piece about the 1960s and early '70s?

Whatever they had in mind, what they've delivered is a showcase for Steve Zahn, that endearingly offbeat actor who's turned “wow, man” into a career.

Bev (Barrymore) is introduced as a beaming 15-year-old who lives in a blue-collar part of a Connecticut town with her cop dad (James Woods, miscast) and her homemaker mom (Lorraine Bracco, making do). At a boy-girl party — that's what they were called in 1965 — her honor is defended by Ray (Zahn), a dim but decent guy who falls in love with her. When Bev discovers she's pregnant, Ray immediately wants to marry her. “Do you love me?” he asks. She shrugs, “It was summer.”

This is a recognizable exchange to more middle-aged women than you want to know about.

In order not to break her father's heart, Bev does marry Ray. And spends the next decade wishing she hadn't. Not because Ray's a creep or a layabout. He's just . . . in the way. That is, in the way of her dreams of going to college and having a career as a writer. Instead, she feels she's been relegated to housewife drudge and often-unfit mother.

The film wants us to see Bev's predicament as funny and fulfilling, hard-scrabble and humanizing. The theme is parents and children: Can't live with 'em, can't get rid of 'em.

Marshall is one of our most adept directors, as she showed in movies like “Big” and “A League of Their Own.” Her film is full of on-target, amusing observations, ranging from stuffing a bra to drying marijuana. But it's never more than a random collection of moments that never pull together.

Barrymore, one of our most appealing actors, works hard, doing her best to be convincing at 35 and 15. She's never bad, but she's never as good as we know she can be. Her best scenes are with Bev's best friend, played by Brittany Morgan (a million times more vibrant and promising than she was in “Don't Say a Word”). These two seem to know what movie they're in, no matter what else is going on.

Still, they're upstaged by Zahn. He manages to make a guy the most interesting and sympathetic character in a so-called chick's flick. This actor has always had a gift for playing off-center drifters, ridden with malaise more than malice. As Ray, he's achingly real — confused, messed up, flawed, trying as hard as he can to be a good guy. His goodbye to his young son is especially poignant. He tells the boy that over the years, he's likely to hear “three really bad things” about his dad almost every day. Two will be true, he says, and one won't. He consoles his son (and himself) as best he can: “If you hear something that's really bad, think that's the one that's not true.”

So much for this being a “women's weepie.”

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution