MOVIE REVIEW : Barrymore, O’Donnell Do All They Can for ‘Mad Love’

Chris O’Donnell and Drew Barrymore soar in “Mad Love,” but the film itself is grounded in a TV-movie feel. It lacks the style and personality to make its young-lovers-on-the-run tale seem fresh rather than way too familiar.

Within the luminously beautiful Barrymore, there’s both a shimmering, mercurial expressiveness and a wounded vulnerability that makes her perfect casting for Casey. She’s the new girl across the Seattle-area lake from the home of O’Donnell’s Matt.

Casey is so much more sophisticated than the boyish-looking Matt, who is drawn to her surely in part because of her streak of recklessness. Casey zeros in on Matt’s vulnerability, which is that his mother deserted him, his father, his younger brother and sister. It’s amazing yet credible--given Casey’s charisma and passion and his own suppressed, troubled history--that the steady, self-disciplined Matt so swiftly throws over the traces and runs off with Casey only to discover how dangerous her anarchic spirit can be.

Antonia Bird, director of the controversial “Priest,” has inspired her two young stars to take the kind of risks that yield portrayals of terrific range, depth and appeal. Unfortunately, this seems the limit of her and writer Paula Milne’s inspiration. We never learn the root cause of Casey’s instability, and just what role her authoritarian father (Jude Ciccolella) may or may not have in her condition.

More effective are her mother (Joan Allen), who gradually asserts herself against her dominating husband, and Matt’s father (Kevin Dunn), who’s a conscientious single parent.

If it accomplishes not a whole lot else, “Mad Love” does show to great advantage O’Donnell, who underplays in impressively sustained fashion, and especially Barrymore, who radiates a timeless, indelible star quality.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for brief strong language and issues of an emotionally disturbed teen, including risk-taking situations and sexuality. Times guidelines: The film also portrays car theft without showing the consequences of such acts; on the whole, it is not suitable for preteens.

‘Mad Love’

Chris O’Donnell: Matt

Drew Barrymore: Casey

Joan Allen: Margaret

Jude Ciccolella: Richard

A Buena Vista Pictures release of a Touchstone Pictures presentation. Director Antonia Bird. Producer David Manson. Screenplay by Paula Milne. Cinematographer Fred Tammes. Editor Jeff Freeman. Costumes Eugenie Bafaloukos. Music Andy Roberts. Production designer David Brisbin. Art director Mark Worthington. Set decorator Gene Serdena. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.