The "Stand by Me" of the new millennium.

Better than "Donnie Darko," better than "The Virgin Suicides," "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" captures exactly what it was like to be a 14 year old boy in 1970's America.

"The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" is genuine, honest, raw and real. This isn't the hip yet soft posturing of Sofia Coppola. This isn't the complex, pharmaceutical drug-addled complexity of "Donnie Darko." Nor is it as dark and troubling as the title might seem to suggest. But the film is dark. It is troubling. It is amazing. Beautiful in it's forthright simplicity, the film is as assured as a 14 year old yet just as confused and complex as one as well. Not in a bad way, mind you, in a beautiful way. In that amazing, wide- open wonder of adolescence. In that time that is both assured and unsure, surprising yet seemingly knowing, troubled yet innocent, bound yet free.

This is it man! So many memories came flooding back to me as I watched the boys here ride their bikes, get drunk, hang out, rock out and plan the most elaborate and ridiculous stunts. This film captures the pure essence of being 14 and male. That wild and magical time when the whole world opens up to you and you watch it flower without any way to truly understand or comprehend the perspective you are suddenly granted. Girls, dope, booze, fighting parents, idiot teachers, ridiculous religious figures, comic books... it's all here.

The film is seen through the eyes of two friends, Francis and Tim, Catholic schoolboys who perform duties as altar boys and spend their lazy school days coming up with ways to get even with strict teacher/nun Sister Assumpta. Obviously inept as both teacher and mentor, Sister Assumpta has no idea how to deal with adolescent boys. Her cloistered spirituality and unflinching ignorance is only highlighted by the fact that she has a wooden leg, making her even more of a mysterious villain to the boys.

The plot of the film is all-encompassing of the lives of the boys. Their school life and church life may be of a narrow scope, but that is only because this is how the boys see it themselves. More free-flowing and poetic is their leisure time spent getting drunk on cough syrup and beer and coming up with characters and storyline for their comic book, The Atomic Trinity, made up, of course, of four characters.

Central to the story is Francis' budding relationship with Margie, a young woman with a secret. As the film unfolds, we get to see the whole complexity of budding sexuality exposed before us. Francis' experience is unique and yet so typical of what so many of us went through in the sexually exposed 70's. Ah... to be 14! The majesty of the bewilderment and the complexity of the grey.

Utilizing live action images that are often beautiful to behold, director Peter Care, who previously helmed music videos, also opens up the film with comic book style animation that acts as both the characters' imaginations as well as an allegory for the plot that is unfolding. Textured and compelling, this juxtaposition gives the film both bite and pace. We see the boy's try to fit into and figure out a deeply complex world while this same storyline is filtered through the black and white morality of a comic book plot. Watching the boy's, in particular Francis, come to terms with the reality of life, that things are not always simply black and white, good vs. evil, is a touching and emotional experience.

Kieran Culkin and Emile Hirsch are awesome, simply perfect, as Tim and Francis. The chemistry they share as friends practically leaps off the screen. Culkin's pimply faced every-boy coupled with Hirsch's windswept cool kid make the duo almost unstoppable. Watching them bring forth a friendship that evokes memories of the friends we had at 14 is simply beautiful. A remarkable scene of depth and raw emotion occurs when the two boys find a dying dog. Culkin's work in this scene will break your heart and this moment acts as a pivotal centerpiece to the film.

Jodie Foster, who helped launch this film utilizing her Egg Pictures company, is nothing short of remarkable as Sister Assumpta. We forget it's Foster in this role, she is so on target here. There is a scene, a moment, when she tells Culkin's Tim, while speaking of God, that, "he sees what's in your heart," which is so raw and so honest that one practically has the wind knocked out of them. Foster takes a role that could have easily been turned into caricature or comic relief and creates a vital, living, breathing, flawed antagonist that is both troubling and hopelessly human. It's powerful stuff and her work perfectly sets the tone for the rest of the film.

I feel like this review cannot do justice to this remarkable film. It is powerful and provocative stuff. It captures boyhood pubescence so honestly and so perfectly without bowing to MTV style shenanigans nor prurient interest. It exposes a crevice of humanity (adolescent boys) that is just as often wrongly maligned as it is wrongly exalted, and digs deep beneath the surface to get at truth. It's remarkable stuff and surely the best arthouse fare to be seen this summer.

The only film I've seen better than this since the beginning of the year is "Y tu mama tambien."

Note:

Based on the novel by Chris Fuhrman, which was published after his death from cancer. The film is dedicated to his memory.

Todd McFarlane, of "Spawn" fame, created the animated sequences.

Only a couple of 70's rock songs are used to create a mood and feel. This film does eschew the "campy" and kitsch feel of the 70's for a more honest and subdued look at the decade.

The poetry of William Blake is important to the plot.

Report Card Script: A+ Acting: A+ Cinematography\Lighting: A+ Special Effects\Make Up: A+ Music: A+ Final Grade: A+

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