The Skipped Parts (2000)

Now, here's what happens when you pick out movies at random at Blockbuster. You end up watching something along the lines of The Skipped Parts, featuring Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Jason Leigh, a very young Mischa Barton, and Bug Hall (who, despite his unfortunate name, reminds me of a guy I've had a massive crush on ... I can absolutely see it, just fast-forward him 15-20 years). Ms. Barrymore plays a role which is oddly reminiscent of her role in Donnie Darko.

The movie is enjoyable enough to watch, and it has its moments, but it is a little off.

It's trying too hard to be quirky, for one thing. 14-year-old Sam Callahan (Bug Hall) has a controlling grandfather and an out-of-control mom, Lydia, who doesn't want to be a mom. Sam doesn't know who his dad is, but thinks he has narrowed the possibilities down to the five photographs he found in his mom's panty box (which is literally a cardboard box). Grandpa, the keeper of the trust fund, banishes Sam and Lydia from their home in Missouri (or is it "Carolina"?) to the hinterlands (which turns out to be Wyoming), but his true desire is to send Sam to military school.

In Wyoming, Lydia rapidly hooks up with Hank and obtains a new out-of-control best friend, Dolores. The naive Sam, with some helpful tips from his mom, hooks up with his equally naive classmate, Maurey. Mom's tips include exactly one form of birth control -- the children should stop having sex when Maurey gets her first period.

By way of a startling contrast with his mom, Sam himself, it turns out, wants to be a parent. Which is fortunate, because he knocks up the seemingly pre-pubescent Maurey (she gets pregnant without ever menstruating, and she ends up not getting an abortion when she discovers her mom is a fell0w patient at the abortion clinic.)

So, by the end of the movie, Maurey and her baby daughter move in with Lydia, Sam, and Hank, Maurey's mom goes to the nuthouse, grandpa's evil plan to send Sam to military school is thwarted when Lydia gets a job at the local diner (apparently ousting the former waitress who was so nice to her -- or maybe business has expanded?), and ... are you still following this? There's way more quirkiness left unexplored, but that should give you a general sense of it.

It is not clear why the movie is set in 1963, and the inane commentary (by Mischa Barton?) sheds no light on this or any other issue.

Maurey's boyfriend is one of many perplexing characters. You might think that Sam (her best friend and the father of her child, who is living with her by the end of the movie) is her boyfriend. Not so. She is dating a seeming star of the football team (remember, they are all young teenagers). But she doesn't want to have sex with her boyfriend, or share any special places with him (e.g., her favorite Wyoming beach). Those are things she'd rather do with a good friend, so she can avoid heartbreak. Allllllllrighty then. We won't even go into his apparent propensity for violence, his gratuitously broken arm (apparently violence runs in the family), and his refusal to dump Maurey after Sam impregnates her.

It seems like the movie is trying to make some point about love, sex, and relationships -- although the point remains impossible to pin down. Lydia and Maurey both attempt to have sex without a "real" relationship. Of course, they end up choosing guys who are madly in love with them (oops).