All in the Unhinged Family

At one point, Drew Barrymore seemed destined to become the Louise Brooks of the second half of the 20th century, mixing liberal doses of healthy sex appeal with an irresistible complicity with her audience; a wink always seems to accompany her smile. Most recently, her career has been heading down a depressingly wholesome track (“The Wedding Singer,” “Ever After”), but she still can exude a wry sweetness disarming enough to excuse just about anything.

This includes “Home Fries,” a thoroughly unhinged comedy from Dean Parisot, best known for his Oscar-winning short, “The Appointments of Dennis Jennings.” Visually fluid and understatedly droll, it’s also narratively addled and needs all the distraction Barrymore can provide, lest one ask too many questions.

The film gets rolling when a heavyset, middle-aged man is chased by a state-of-the-art Air Force helicopter, which terrorizes him to the point of a fatal heart attack. Among the grieving are his wife (Catherine O’Hara), his sons Angus and Dorian (Jake Busey and Luke Wilson) and his very pregnant girlfriend Sally Jackson (Barrymore), the drive-thru girl at the local Burger-Matic.

In making its informal and none-too-kindly overview of their lives (Sally’s house hasn’t been painted since the Civil War and her father is a drunk), “Home Fries” asks us to swallow a lot. Angus and Dorian were the helicopter pilots; their jealousy-crazed mother has put them up to the harassment-turned-murder; and none of these people--in a town where the population’s got to be in the high two-figures--knows one another (never mind the fact that the Air Force National Guard, to which the two lads belong, is located conveniently in their own hometown).

The search for Sally, with whom Dorian falls quickly in love, takes up most of the mileage in this story, which requires everyone to run pretty much in place.

Parisot makes deliciously ironic use of his music (like Dean Martin singing “Memories Are Made of This”) and good use of Wilson, who really dominates the film. If he seems to be grimacing through a lot of it, it’s understandable: Busey’s Angus is a madman, as is Mom, and Dorian looks at Sally as his sanctuary and ticket to sanity.

Of course, the baby’s going to be both his brother and his son (“my brother . . . my son . . . my brother . . . my son”), but what’s one more distraction in a town, or a movie, like this?

* MPAA rating: PG-13 for thematic elements and some sexual humor. Times guidelines: more to police than the average prime-time series.

‘Home Fries’

Drew Barrymore: Sally

Catherine O’Hara: Mrs. Lever

Luke Wilson: Dorian

Jake Busey: Angus

Shelley Duvall: Mrs. Jackson

Warner Bros. presents a Mark Johnson/Baltimore Pictures/Kasan Pictures production. Directed by Dean Parisot. Produced by Mark Johnson, Barry Levinson, Lawrence Kasdan, Charles Newirth. Written by Vince Gilligan. Executive producer Romi Lassally. Director of photography Jerry Zielinski. Production designer Barry Robinson. Editor Nicholas C. Smith. Music Rachel Portman. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

Playing in general release.