December 15, 1998 -- "Home Fries" reminds me a little of "Raising Arizona," in that it is a very offbeat, sometimes black, comedy peopled by very strange characters. The only trouble I had with it is that sometimes I got the feeling that some of the strange characters seemed out of place, as if they had been forced into the story against their wills solely for comic effect.

Drew Barrymore ("Ever After," "The Wedding Singer") stars as Sally, a poor young woman who has fallen in love with a married man Henry Lever (Chris Ellis) who gets her pregnant. Lever's insanely jealous wife played by Catherine O'Hara is obsessed with her husband's secret affair and dispatches her equally crazy son, Angus (Jake Busey "Contact") and her other son Dorian (Luke Wilson, "Scream 2," and "Bottle Rocket") to find and kill Sally.

Through an unbelievably complex set of circumstances and improbable coincidences, Dorian and Angus end up killing their father and Dorian falls in love with Sally. He tries to prevent Angus from killing her in a series of silly assassination attempts. On top of that, Sally's father turns out to be another strange character who takes hostages when he gets drunk.

As you can probably tell, the plot needs some work, but Luke Wilson and Drew Barrymore at least make a convincing couple in the midst of all this madness. The love story works, and there are some funny scenes, but I didn't find some of the characters very funny or very convincing, just strange. Fortunately, Wilson is a fine young actor with a strong screen presence. At the end of the film, with all the nuts locked up, he shows that he and Barrymore can do just fine by themselves. This film rates a C+.

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