It turned out that there was a lot more to this movie than I was anticipating when I decided to watch it. I watched it largely on the basis of Alec Baldwin, who's a pretty good actor. But at the same time I knew that the basic plot revolved around a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak, who gets sent to a snooty prep school after getting in some trouble at home. I figured this would turn out to be a pretty typical teen-style comedy, with the "bad kid" heading off to the "good school" and turning it upside down, with the movie becoming little more than sex and drugs. It's true that there's a lot of weed in this, but much to my surprise there's no sex and not even a hint of nudity. It actually turns out to be a fairly complex study of relationships and commitment and the importance of taking responsibility for your actions.
Shawn Hatosy was Tim Dunphy - the kid who gets sent off to this school. We find out early on that he has a troubled home life, loyally devoted to his wheelchair bound little brother Jackie (Tommy Bone) but with a distant relationship with his father, who's played by Baldwin, and who seems to have time to do little else but play poker with his buddies. (As an aside, dad's "buddies" are played by a pretty decent cast of actors, including George Wendt and Richard Jenkins.) For much of the movie we know nothing about Tim's mother, except that she isn't there. When her absence finally gets explained, it resolves some of the issues about what's going on between Tim and his dad, and perhaps explains his dad's emotional emptiness.
The prep school part of the story is also more interesting than expected at first glance. There's some "teen cliché" stuff going on, but really less than I expected. Yes, as I noted, there's a lot of weed smoked over the course of an hour and a half, and there's the requisite "evil" adult character, in this case represented by My. Funderburk, played by Timothy Crowe, but even Funderburke (while a bit ridiculous at times) is less over the top than most similar characters in teen movies. As I said, there's neither sex nor nudity in this, but there is a surprisingly well portrayed romance between Tim and Jane (played by Amy Smart) - a girl from the right side of the tracks. It's one of those unlikely and somewhat unbelievable romances that nevertheless worked in this case, and I thought that Hatosy and Smart were good together. Ultimately, of course, what hijinks there were at the school leads to problems, and Tim has to decide whether to take responsibility for his actions or not, and the revelation of why Tim's mother is absent even leads ultimately to a sort of warming in the relationship between Tim and his dad.
This actually turns out to be a much more interesting movie than one might anticipate. In fact, although it's set in a prep school and is at times humorous, I wouldn't really call this a teen comedy at all. It's got too much going on for that; it raises too many issues to be dismissed as just that. It's surprisingly well done. (7/10)
