Riding the Bus with My Sister

This was basically your standard Lifetime network kind of drama, with one, horrid exception: Rosie O'Donnell. I hear she produced this movie, which I suppose is the best explanation for why no one on the production acted to remove her for another more qualfied actress.

Evidently Rosie subscribes to the "worst stereotypes of mentally handicapped persons" school of acting. She balls up her fists and hold them close to my chest, like some gigantic flightless bird. She juts her lower chin out, her face frozen with about as much depth of feeling as an extra in a George Romero "Living Dead" movie...and her voice. It is not an exaggeration to say, if it were used against Iraqi prisoners, it would be at the top of the Human Rights violations list. This combination croak / screech - Gilford Godfrey, part Pee-Wee Herman, and part "Which Way Did He Go, George?" - is in fact a talent; neither my wife nor I could actually reproduce this noise she was making. Mentally challenged folk do not look like this, do not talk like this. Her performance insults them.

She is an insult to acting. Watching 10 seconds of her insulted my intelligence as well as assaulted my senses. The actors who worked with her should have their therapy bills covered by the studio.

I did not like the movie because it did not have much of an ending. And because there was no real resolution between Beth and Rachel. Rachel went back to new york and got on with her life while Beth stayed where she was and her life remained the same. It would have been a better ending if Beth and Jesse moved in with each other and lived together. And if Rachel would have done something to help her sister to have a real life. Some of the people on the bus were right in a way. Beth should have got a life. There likely something she could have done as an occupation. She needed to learn if possible when to keep quiet and not say certain things. There is a lot she needed to learn and the system was not helping her learn. She had a case worker. But no indication she was helping her get a life.

Anjelica Huston has given enough good acting performances and directed at least one very good film (Bastard out of Carolina), that she can perhaps be forgiven for this. But there is no forgiving Rosie and Andie, who give two of the most godawful performances ever put on film. You'd think Rosie would win the bad acting competition hands-down, since she has the over-the-top, tug-at-your-heartstrings role and plays it with such zero-talent gusto; but, if possible, Andie is worse in that expressionless, monotone, "but she's pretty" way that somehow keeps getting her cast in movies. Unintentional laughs throughout...a real pleasure if you throw out all expectations and just revel in the awfulness.

Unfortunately the directing gene was not passed down from John Huston to his daughter Anjelica Huston, who clearly has no idea what the hell she is doing and can't modulate Rosie O'Donnell's performance from reaching heights so over the top, it soars through the stratosphere. Hallmark films don't scream quality, but this scrapes some truly horrible depths. The film can never rise above Rosie O'Donnell, who belts out every line and seems to be channeling the worst stereotypes of mentally disabled people, that the film ends up feeling like a parody of the disabled. It's like she ate a handful of amphetamines before each scene and was let loose, never being told to bring it down about 50 notches and that she's making a fool of herself. The script is derivative nonsense, but it's her monstrous performance that makes the film worth viewing for condescending laughs - without Rosie O'Donnell this film would never have become the morbid curiosity it is.

I would normally dismiss a film like this as tear-jerking rubbish but I have to admit this film grabbed me and held me captive almost entirely due to the fantastic performance by Rosie O'Donnell! Who would have thought?!

The movie does have a sad tone to it at times too; I was particularly saddened to see Andie McDowell with a pot belly in the beginning of the film where she is exercising on the treadmill. I guess things must change in life as time goes on.

Rosie steals the show though. Her emphatic "I'm a person!" statements, her faces, her body language, her use of her voice for emphasis were all parts of what adds up to a world-class performance. Curly Howard could not have done better were he a female actor. The scene at the beach where she is jumping up and down, waving her arms and yelling had me laughing out loud, and nearly all her interactions with the people on any of the bus rides were hilarious. Bravo!

The rest of the characters were almost entirely meaningless, though they didn't detract from the movie itself. Place Rosie and Andie as their respective characters in any situation and you've got a runaway success; the real tragedy is that this film placed the two characters in an evening TV drama -- a genre that virtually guarantees the audience would be ill-equipped to appreciate them.

If you want to laugh out loud, watch this film; it's among the funniest non-comedies out there at this point!