The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

Buy This Item The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys by Sony Pictures  Available from Amazon  $17.99  on 11-25-2008     A refreshing and honest portrayal of adolescent Catholic boys. <I>The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys</I> follows Tim (Kieran Culkin) and Francis (Emile Hirsch) as they engage in aimless vandalism and mockery--not from malice but boredom. Sadly, the theft of a religious icon and a plan to kidnap a cougar result in far more serious consequences than either boy intends. The authenticity of the characters and dialogue make the movie work; both script and performances are genuine and consistently surprising. Jena Malone, as a troubled girl who gets involved with Francis, is particularly good, but the whole cast (which includes Jodie Foster and Vincent D'Onofrio) does excellent work. In capturing both the harm and the good that teenagers can do, <I>The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys</I> transcends the usual rebellious-kids storyline. The movie features animated segments that depict Francis's fantasy life, created by Todd McFarlane (<I>Spawn</I>). <I>--Bret Fetzer</I> Reader Reviews The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (Peter Care, 2002) I wanted to hate this movie. And for the first half, I did a pretty good job. There's just something about any film touched by a member of the Culkin clan (the last movie I remember seeing with a Culkin in it that I really liked was Jacob's Ladder) that manages to rub me the wrong way; it's like someone took a whole slew of Albert Brooks clones and put them into a single family. By the end of this, however, I admit I was hooked. The story centers on Francis Doyle (Lords of Dogtown's Emile Hirsch) and Tim Sullivan (Kieran Culkin), two Catholic-school students who are part of a small collective of artists working on a comic book called The Atomic Trio. The comic book, which is pretty nasty by any standards, is considered positively obscene by the teachers, when they discover it, in no small part because one of the villains is modeled after Sister Assumpta (Jodie Foster). When she gets hold of the thing, she takes it to the headmaster, Father Casey (Voncent D'Onofrio), whose boys-will-be-boys attitude doesn't make her terribly happy. Not that that matters to the kids, who retaliate by planning the biggest prank the school's ever seen. Of course, they hold the previous record, having nicked a statue from the school's bell tower and hidden it in a nearby mausoleum, which has become the group's de facto clubhouse. Everything gets more complex when Francis finds himself attracted to fellow student Margie Flynn (Jena Malone of the forthcoming The Ruins). About the best thing I can say about the first half of the film is that it's not terrible. It's competently done, but it's all setup, and it's not very interesting setup at that. Once they start planning their harebrained prank, however, things pick up nicely, and we finally start getting a feeling for these characters. Screenwriters Jeff Stockwell and Michael Petroni open the storyline up a bit, introducing us to a more interesting batch of folks than we've met previously (namely Margie's very off-the-wall family, who despite getting almost no screen time steal the show) and giving us a lot more insight into most of the characters we already know. The odd exception is Sister Assumpta, who remains as much a two-dimensional villain as the artistic renderings of her done by her students. In the end, it's not bad, but it could have been a great deal better, and the second half is proof of that. ** ½

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys Available from Amazon Price: $17.99 Updated on 11-25-2008.

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