First off I have raised two mentally challenged children and Rosie's portrayal is not far off from what some of these children act like. My family and I enjoyed this movie a lot and thought all the actresses and actors did well with what they had.Bob Fingerman- Should be horse wiped by all the people that he's labeling "retards", in his comment. How dare you ! Go back to not believing in anything, because your mind is as lost as your sole. You said it yourself that you now believe in Satan and that's a shame that you'd only believe in the one who destroys. It just shows what kind of a person you really are.If you took the time Bob to work with these type of people, or had raised any of them, you'd know that they are so diverse in how they act, talk, etc. A lot of them are very smart and just because they were born with difficulties, does not mean that you can call them names or down grade them. Seems that you are right among them, in lacking social skills and speaking harsh, because you don't have the knowledge to know that it's not right to speak to people with harshness.It's one thing to judge an actor, or actress, but to put down the person they are portraying is just wrong ! If one day you do get a chance to be blessed to be around one of these mentally challenged people and grow to like or even love them, then my words will come back to you. You will see that even using the word was wrong on your part. Sorry but your post was just a slap in the face to me, because I AM the mother of two of these children and I don't take kind to anyone bashing their problems, because to me? They are the best gift the world could have gotten. They make you slow down and look at life and learn what "real love" is all about. I'm sorry you're missing out on that.

Riding the Bus with My Sister is a shameless attempt to put up such an insane sequence of events into a two-hour-plus-commercials time slot to total up to this: Beth (Rosie O'Donnell) is inspiring and courageous and livens up those lives of people around her, and anyone who doesn't see otherwise can shove it. But the opposite is true, particularly due to the performance, though the writing doesn't help. It's not within the power of a filmmaker to make something that doesn't draws the viewer compassionately in, as LONG AS it doesn't try and think the viewers themselves are, to use the word bluntly, retarded. But Angelica Huston, who doesn't seem to do her late-father proud when it comes to taking the director's chair, plops on the sentiment when really what is being revealed is the wildly contrived story of a control freak who's mean and annoying and, at the end of it all, unsympathetic. This might be passing a lot of judgment on O'Donnell's character, who was based on a real person, but it's not without some notice. Beth might be one of the most irritating characters in recent memory, in TV or elsewhere.This doesn't mean some (totally unintentional) laughs aren't to be had at the expense of the totally dingbat turn from O'Donnell. Maybe it's method, maybe it's just playing it in a very horrific one-note way, but she doesn't do anything to help make this big goose who doesn't seem to notice that the ones who point out that she's loud and obnoxious might be the correct ones. No, the point of view of the filmmakers control that more than anything, wherein it's all either black or white: either people really respect and care for her (the black tae-kwan-do student who has the Isaac Hayes look is never explained really as to why he's with her aside from 'she makes me laugh, I love her, blah blah'), or they're dismayed by her rude quality, like when she's at the cafeteria the bus drivers are at and, after the umpteenth time she's been there, is yelled at by one of the other drivers to get out as it's the BUS DRIVERS section. It would be one thing if the writer tried to make this as some legitimate dramatic scene, but it's all played up like "people just don't understand," which is accentuated by the whole relationship between the two sisters.Now, it's not that McDowell doesn't try a little with the part, but what is there to be given to her anyway? Her part is meant as a lazy counterpoint to Beth's half-crazy half-stupid mindset. She's a career woman who is a photographer (not very well apparently, even when she makes "arty" photos in black and white), who puts aside her career, and her boyfriend, to stay with Beth after the death of their father. Rainman, however, this surely is not; the story has very little in the way of actual development, except for the most base and totally, despicably predictable points, with O'Donnell grinding on through in a performance that gives cringe-worthy a bad name (or a good name, I guess). Even the flashbacks are ridiculously inept at showing anything aside from 'I didn't really care for my sister then, and I should've, as it took my father about my entire adolescence to move out of the house', in a gray Flags of Our Fathers tint of course. This is all capped off with a final section where Beth tries to contemplate having children. At this point, against my better judgment, I soldiered on to the end, with rests on a shot of Beth, her sister, and the "hot" bus driver all in a goofy pose. If you have the guts to go through it, just make sure to know there's many "laughs, tears, hugs, etc", complete with the sappiest guitar pluckings this side of Eric Clapton after watching a puppy die, and an atmosphere of total dread where there should be some rays of happiness for these people for the audience. No such luck; it's a Hallmark movie at its most exploitative.

for intelligence. Tripe like this again falls into a category where a mediocre actor (O'Donnell), with money and too much fame, feels like doing something altruistic (a TV movie) and pretends to have one iota of medical knowledge or empathy (she was on several talk shows, discussing Asperger syndrome) and she even mis-pronounced it!.Why, oh why do we in the US have to be subjected to this garbage?- In Europe, I do not see the TV being inundated with mediocre TV actors/talk show hosts. Actors seem to know their place, and concentrate on art, not media hype, curing cancer, or discussing mental illnesses (which they have no business doing).I see I am not the only reviewer sick of this trend; Do not waste your valuable time or money on this film. It is not educational, is mere publicity fodder for O'Donnell to add another notch on her "social consciousness" belt. Enough already. 0/10.

You'd have to be completely heartless not to be moved by this film. The characters are deep and the plot simple so it's easy to stay involved in their story. If you're a sin city-type or violence crazed testosterone pumped numb-skull then don't expect to enjoy this-but then you wouldn't watch it would you! This has a tone on par with Ghost but admittedly not as good or heart-wrenching. Amongst other movies of its type involving the mentally disabled this movie is unique in emphasising not the weaknesses but the strength of Beth as she moves about her life despite having lost her father and carer. Her independence is founded in her routine and the knowledge of the people she knows through it. A light-hearted, heartwarming story with emphasis on the important things in life and how priorities change.