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'Home Fries': a quirky, disturbing, entertaining comedy By Will Raiman Fry ATLANTA November 20, 1998
 Home Fries is the new, slightly off-balance comedy, starring Drew Barrymore as a young girl working in a fast food joint while worrying about the child she is supposed to deliver very soon. One of her main concerns about this child is that he won't have a father. There are two reasons for this:
First, the man who got her pregnant was already married to another woman. Second, the man who got her pregnant is now dead.
It turns out that the wife (Catherine O'Hara) of this cheating man found out about his infidelity, and talked her two boys (Luke Wilson and Jake Busey) into taking care of him. As a measure of how much influence she has over the boys, I would point out that both of them were willing to use the AH-1 Cobra Attack Helicopter that they had access to as members of the Army National Guard to scare the cheating husband straight.
However, only Busey picks up on his mother's real desires and takes the extra step of shooting some blanks from the nose turret of the helicopter and sending his cheating stepfather on his way with a heart attack. Wilson is much more grounded in the real world, but he too is under the heel of his manipulative mother.
So the stepfather is dead, and there is no evidence to point back to the two brothers. It's the perfect murder, right? Wrong. Some of the workers at the local Burger-Matic overheard the radio chatter of the two pilots on their drive-through headsets. Busey's (somewhat psycho) character demands that his brother take a job at the burger joint to find out if anyone there suspects anything. The more normal brother balks at this prospect, but he is willing to help out his family yet again. Meanwhile, the manipulative mom is obsessing about finding out who the mistress of her late husband was, and she and Busey are hatching plans to rub out the unfortunate lady when they find her.
Now, if you haven't figured it out yet, Barrymore was the mistress, and her to-be-child belongs to the late cheater. When Wilson takes the job at the fast food restaurant he figures this out. Wilson isn't willing to hand Barrymore over to his murderous clansmen, and in fact he is takes quite a shining to the sweet, simple girl.
What follows is a very different sort of romance-comedy as Wilson tries to have a relationship with Barrymore without getting her killed. At the same time he tries to talk his mother out of her psychopathic urges, and to de-program his brother. Plus, it's probably not possible to put a fast food burger place in a movie without making a few fast food jokes.
Jake Busey is one of my favorite new actors. I'm sure you all remember how cool he was in Starship Troopers. In this movie, he is just great and adds to the strong acting that underpins what would otherwise be a hard to believe story. Catherine O'Hara plays her part as demonically as is expected, but I am afraid that she has been thoroughly typecast as the stressed out mother.
I was ready to call Luke Wilson a newcomer to the movie world, but apparently he was in Scream 2, though with a small role. He has had some other appearances, including a part in an episode of the X-Files which I actually remember. I am happy to say that he is slated to appear in several upcoming movies. He is a great actor, and a pleasure to watch on the big screen. I am sure he'll go far.
In the tradition of the slightly morbid comedies that have been around lately, Home Fries is funny, disturbing and thoroughly entertaining. I recommend it as a good choice for a night at the movies.
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Copyright © 1998 by Gregory S. Scherrer, Editor and by the Student Publications Board
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