I love Drew Barrymore.
With acting in her genes, the girl always delivers. I'm not arguing she has it in her to become the next Meryl Streep with a soaring 15 nominations coming her way in just three decades, but every role she plays has the same Barrymore laugh, smile, slight lisp and spunk. One of the actor's most famous roles comes from her young performance in the smash-hit Steven Spieberg epic: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982. In a motion picture as highly regarded as E.T., the two biggest celebrities to come out of it were the alien and the 7-year-old curly haired blond.
The alien was mass-produced as a doll/stuffed animal type thing. My brother had one that he carried around with him everywhere into the early 90s. He used it to scare me. Luckily, in Drew's next success there was no alien that would later be made into a doll that could be used by big brothers to scare their younger sisters. Two years after E.T. the young Barrymore earned herself a Golden Globe nod in the 1984 comedy/drama Irreconcilable Differences.
The Shelley Long and Ryan O'Neal movie didn't do too hot at the box office, but with a young Drew and Sharon Stone in the mix-it was deemed worthy of a re-release by the powers that be. The flick is part of a group of selected 80s movies called "The Lost Collection. Now any 80s compilation would have to have at least one movie with Shelley Long. She is as necessary a component to the decade's set as the Empire State Building is to New York. The skyline would just feel odd without it. Long soared to fame in her role as Diane Chambers in the immensely popular sitcom, Cheers. Long is like a stitch in time, or a stitch in the 80s.
Many of Long's roles have her playing the romantic comedienne, similar to her Cheers character. Let's just say there could've been no "Ross and Rachel," had there been no Diane Chambers and Sam Malone in the Boston bar. Long's classic portrayal of her character's ups and downs, her batting eyelashes and aching heart, is not lost by Irreconcilable Differences where she plays a mom in a broken marriage.
The film opens with a lawyer preaching to his client, hidden behind a large leather chair, about the upcoming struggles of life post-divorce - covering all of his bases. Just as we begin to imagine a well-dressed Beverly Hills man gearing up to lose his well-manicured wife, we see her: the curly-haired Barrymore attempting to divorce her parents and achieve a legal emancipation to live with her mom's maid, who gave her the necessary amount of TLC. The film is set in the space of their trial, the story told as a series of flashbacks as recalled by the characters.
Albert and Lucy Brodsky (O'Neal and Long) met in a romantic fashion (or unromantic depending on the way you'd choose to see it: He was hitchhiking and she took pity on him because of the start of a rainstorm). They fell in love, married fast and had their daughter Casey almost immediately. The three were happy until Albert and Lucy made it big in Hollywood by writing a movie that was an extreme success. While their pockets deepened, their relationships with Casey became increasingly shallow-right up to the point where Casey decides she wants a divorce.
Barrymore earned her nomination through her performance at the trial. She employs a wonderful balance of upset and bratty. While Irreconcilable Differences doesn't have the huevos of Kramer vs. Kramer, its story provides a similar emotional reaction because of the effect of a failing marriage on a child. Barrymore's performance here isn't as sad as the one she gave in Riding in Cars with Boys, as silly as in Never Been Kissed, or as crazy as in Mad Love. It's somewhere in the middle, and it's downright adorable. So if it's the Barrymore spunk you're after, Irreconcilable Differences is a chance to see it at its roots.
DVD Bonus Features
There's usually not much to speak of in the way of extras when it comes to older movies, as the filmmakers didn't plan for a special DVD section. Accordingly, the film doesn't have much except for a trivia option. You can play the film with trivia questions running along the bottom of the screen. The questions pertain to both the movie and the actors, pre- and post- Irreconcilable Differences. It actually wasn't nearly as distracting as I thought it would be, so if learning about the film and the actors interests you, it's a fun way to kill two birds with one stone.
"Irreconcilable Differences" is on sale April 14, 2009 and is rated PG13. Comedy, Drama. Directed by Charles Shyer. Written by Charles Shyer , Nancy Meyers. Starring Drew Barrymore, Ryan ONeal, Sharon Stone, Shelley Long, Shirya.
