It's a bit of a bumpy journey when Drew Barrymore goes Riding in Cars with Boys.

Riding is wisely promoted as a comedy-drama because that's what it is.

The first third is wildly funny but the flick takes an abrupt detour into kitchen-sink melodrama.

Barrymore plays Beverly Donofrio, a bright, precocious 15-year-old growing up in Wallingford, Conn. in the 1960s, who dreams of becoming a famous writer.

Instead she becomes pregnant by and marries Ray Murphy (Steve Zahn), a high-school dropout.

Ray really does love her and their son Jason, but is ill equipped to be a husband or a father. He's a well-meaning loser who squanders what little money they have on alcohol and drugs.

Eventually, Beverly banishes Ray from her life, raises Jason on her own, completes high school and unleashes the writer within her.

The film is told in flashbacks as Beverly drives Jason (Adam Garcia), now 20, to find Ray and get him to sign a release form so her book can be published.

The role of Beverly is a tour de force for Barrymore who takes the woman from 15 to 35, remaining surprisingly credible throughout the journey.

It's an honest, insightful performance that refuses to turn Beverly into either a saint or a martyr.

She's selfish, willful and irascible.

Zahn is a marvel. He brings a great deal of complex pathos to his performance. The final meeting between wife, son and father is devastating.

Penny Marshall fills her film with period detail that shows how Beverly was very much a victim of time, place and circumstance.

She is less successful in handling the film's switches in tone which explains why, though Riding in Cars aims to carry us from comedy to drama, it never quite rises above melodrama.

For this reason the film is never as effective or as powerful as the performances it showcases.

(This film is rated AA)

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