A story of a pregnant teenager, her painfully disappointed parents and her idiot husband does not carry much value in mainstream film anymore. A story of lost dreams, sacrifices, and forgiveness carries even less. The strange thing about Penny Marshall?s “Riding in Cars With Boys” is that it contains all of these aspects of a film narrative, and somehow manages to carry nothing.

The film tells the true story of author Beverly Donofrio, played by Drew Barrymore. After Bev experiences ultimate humiliation at the hands of the football hunk that she is infatuated with, she meets high school drop-out Ray Hasek (Steve Zahn), who is instantly willing to risk personal harm to defend his new love interest. The couple finds teenage happiness that comes to an abrupt, adult end with an unexpected pregnancy. Cornered in by her father?s broken heart (brilliantly conveyed by James Woods) and a passionate proposal from Ray, Bev agrees to begin a life that will not produce the future that she wants. The story traces the growth of her son Jason, the destruction of her dreams and the drug and alcohol abuse that haunts her husband.

It sounds compelling enough. The problem is that the film fails to establish the most basic principle of storytelling: the audience needs to care about the characters. After a few minutes of Barrymore as a perky, lost teen, there is no reason to express any concern over where she might end up. As Zahn?s character enters the story, there is a feeling of hope. Zahn has successfully driven many films from a supporting role, but here the dumb, lost Ray is even too difficult for Zahn to carry through. The blank stares and closed body language that Zahn uses in an attempt to convey Ray?s internal struggles look more like exercises in an acting class.

The truly distracting aspect of this film is the comedy-drama feeling that it attempts to create. Instead of tragedy being sprinkled with light moments of comic release, the tragedies themselves try to carry a level of comedy that undermines the impact of important scenes. Child neglect, child abandonment and drug addiction are apparently funny to Penny Marshall and screenwriter Morgan Upton Ward.

The film is brought to an end with tears and emotions that seem to fall from several angles, but have little or no connection to the experiences in the story we have been told. Despite an effectively hurtful performance by Woods and the truly tear-jerking separation of Ray and Jason, “Riding in Cars With Boys” is barely better than driving your car off of a cliff.

One star out of four