Boys on the Side

Boys on the Side is a charming comedy about the strong friendship between three women. Jane, Robin and Holly are as different as fire, water and air, but on a trip across the USA they are thoroughly shaken together. Robin is on a nostalgia tour, Jane is on her way to the West Coast to make it as a singer, and Holly has left her violent, drugged-up boyfriend, whom she incidentally injured with a baseball bat, with fatal consequences. Robin's sudden illness forces them to stop in Tucson, Arizona, where they later settle permanently as an alternative to the nuclear family.

Don Ross takes up for debate every taboo he can think of. Boys on the Side gives humour priority over serious drama, but the film contains both. The happy-go-lucky pregnant Holly, who cheerfully lets herself be arrested by her future husband, the thoroughly honest policeman Abe, is the film's life-affirming element. Goldberg and Parker have more serious roles. Parker plays the estate agent Robin, with a warped family relationship and a life marked by AIDS, while Goldberg is the black lesbian Jane, who against all common sense falls in love with the doomed heterosexual Robin.

Goldberg, Parker and Barrymore are on fine form in the three exciting female roles. Boys on the Side is the actors' film, for Ross has written the loveliest lines, but at certain moments the film is also nauseatingly sentimental, quite utterly dreadful.