Pun Salad

One of Mrs. Salad's picks. Sorry, honey, this movie kind of irritated me.

It's 1962 in rural California. 15-year-old Ellie's mom just got fatally hit by a car (but not badly enough for a closed-casket funeral), and Ellie blames herself for making her mom late. If only she'd crossed the street a few seconds earlier! Or later.

Or just waited until she could have crossed the street safely. Sheesh.

Anyway, Dead Mom was a huge Eleanor Roosevelt fan, and was due to introduce her at a shindig. That obviously didn't happen. But Ellie's best friend "Max the Wax" has the wind in her whiskers, and to snap Ellie out of her funk, she inveigles them both into a classic movie road trip, off to see Eleanor at her upstate NY estate.

A lot of unlikely things happen. They pick up an older gentleman whose real-life character (without spoiling things too much) was previously portrayed by Clint Eastwood many years ago. Ellie's dysfunctioning father snaps himself out of depression long enough to go chasing after Ellie with Max's sorta-boyfriend in a sidecar. The girls stop to pick up Max's Aunt Daisy (Jessica Alba), who's working as a Las Vegas dancer. (Unfortunately: Las Vegas, New Mexico.)

It's all kind of contrived, sorry. ("Gee, Max, it's as if our lives are under the control of some wacky screenwriter, and we have no free will of our own!")

Jessica Alba is pretty easy to look at, though, and her fate here is better than it was in Sin City.

Wait a minute, Ione Skye was in this?! I missed that totally.