Plot
Intelligent but naive Beverly Donofrio (Drew Barrymore), a teenager when the movie begins in the early 1960s, dreams of becoming a writer. At 15, she and her best friend Fay (Brittany Murphy), go to a party and get drunk. Beverly ends up having sex with a friendly stranger named Ray (Steve Zahn). She finds out she is pregnant and contemplates having an abortion, but cannot bring herself to do so. Ray feels it would be right to propose to Beverly and professes his love for her, she reluctantly replies the same. At her wedding, Fay announces she is also pregnant and the two girls, although upset, celebrate the fact they will both have little girls together.
As the months go by, the girls realize they are missing out on life, like prom and an education. Beverly and Ray welcome a son named Jason, however, when he is born, Beverly refuses to hold him saying she had a girl, not a boy, and when Ray tells her they have a son, she bursts into tears. Beverly is jealous that she had a boy and Fay got to have a baby girl, Amelia. However, Fay's husband soon leaves her. Beverly kicks Ray out after he spends all their money on drugs. Jason (Logan Lerman) hates his mother for making Ray leave and Beverly blames Jason for the way her life has turned out.
Beverly and Fay soon turn to selling pot in order to make money. Jason (who is still mad at his mother) knows what they are doing and tells his grandfather (James Woods), who is a cop, and he arrests them. Fay's family bails the girls out under the condition that Fay moves away with her brother and Amelia promising to not see Beverly again.
In the present day, Beverly and Jason (Adam Garcia) are driving to visit Ray to get his permission to release her novel, which talks about his drug use. Ray and Jason share a moment where Ray knew the best thing for his son was to leave and Jason knows his mom did the right thing as Ray is still an addict and living in a trailer. Ray signs the papers. Jason is also in a relationship with Amelia (Maggie Gyllenhaal). However, Beverly doesn't know, and after a confrontation with his mother in which Jason says that she ruined his life, she finally admits how proud she is of him and tells him to go to Amelia, leaving her in the middle of nowhere saying she wants him to be happy. It is implied that Fay and Beverly are still best friends, as she remarks she can't believe Fay didn't tell her that Jason and Amelia were in a relationship. In the middle of nowhere, Beverly is forced to call her father, with whom she has a very strained relationship, and the two reconcile.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)