My Boys Are Good Boys

Hi, Everyone, Your boys might be good boys, but your movie's a bad movie. How did they fail with this one? The cast is made up of great veteran actors who can easily turn in a great performance. The title song is sung by Dorsey Burnette. Even Dorsey cannot make this title song sound good.

The story line is adequate. A few kids want to rob an armored car. What kid doesn't want to rob an armored car? No real violence to speak of here. Stupidity galore but little violence.

This movie unfolds more unevenly than a 29 cent taco. Ida Lupino is the loving wife who is not in love. A part she has played to perfection many times before. David Doyle (Am I the only one who confuses him with Tom Bosley?) overacts. Lloyd Nolan is excellent in his role but it does not save the movie. Ralph Meeker looks like he is being handed his pages of script just before each scene begins.

This cast could have spent the same amount of hours with a good director and a good script and they could have made a real winner. The last line in the movie is so ridiculous it almost made my smoke detector go off.

It is fun to watch this to check gas prices way back when.

Ida Lupino was better in High Sierra. Lloyd Nolan was better in Peyton Place. Ralph Meeker was better in The Dirty Dozen.

If you like Dorsey Burnette's voice, listen to Hey Little One or Tall Oak Tree.

Other than that it was OK.

Tom Willett

Ida Lupino and Ralph Meeker together again after being terrorized by giant rats in food of the gods.anyway Ralph meeker plays an armored car driver,his son is in a reformatory being watched over by a guard with a big heart(David Doyle)yeah bosley on TVs Charlie's angels.well the plot starts to unfold when three of the kids plan to rob the armored car led by Ralph Meekers son(Sean Thomas Roche)and a girl(Kerry Lynn)who is being tutored by Ralph meekers characters wife.there's some good car chases and crashes,plot twists and some pg rated mayhem,ill have to say its not a bad little b movie,also in the movie is the great Lloyd Nolan who i remember from the Julia TV show with Dianne Carroll. i saw this one on the 50 action classics DVD set from mill creek,formally tree line films.i guess Ralph Meeker and Ida Lupino needed a break from the food of the gods(77)i especially like David Doyle's performance as the guard.6 out of 10

I had never heard of it before watching this seventies crime movie. A crime flick that looks like a fifties or late forties film, speaking of juvenile delinquency. Not the seventies genre, for sure. The story is very surprising, where a bunch of very young hoodlums pull a daring and clever armored truck heist, behaving like professionals. Very surprising. I did not expect so much. And seeing old movie actors like Oda Lupino and Lloyd Nolan is pretty weird and funny too. Yes, a very good little film which grabs you, despite the fact that you have only a few spectacular and exciting elements. But don't misunderstand me, that's not a masterpiece, just a smart little grade B picture. Music score all along the film is pretty entertaining too.

This film is available on Mill Creek Entertainment's Action Classics 100 Movie Pack. After watching Trained to Kill: USA (the real reason I bought the box set) I switched to the next movie My Boys Are Good Boys, at first I assumed it was about rebellious youths and the whole movie would take place in the reformatory where they are held, but the story seemed to have more surprising twists and turns then an episode of 24. A somewhat easy escape leads to the youths robbing an armored truck. This is one of the best stories I have seen in a long time. What was also surprising was the performances. More notably David Doyle who played Harry Klinger the reformatory guard giving his my boys are good boys speech, Kerry Lynn as Priscilla, and the always hungry Chunky played by Robert Cokjlat. This film is a classic and a joy to discover.

I would have rated this film with 1 star, but it got an additional 1 for Lloyd Nolan's brave performance as a security officer and an extra 1/2 for Ida Lupino as a shrewish wife, and an extra 1/2 for Ralph Meeker's role as a truculent drunk bad dad.

But the MUSIC! Oh my God. The music. The horrible synthesizer music bubbling away like little rodential heartbeats as we are supposed to feel fear, tension, drama, interest, or some other emotion which we cannot feel because the music is popping like popcorn farts! Oh, Lord have mercy. If you are the kind of person who can't take bad music, please, be cautious -- the sound track may damage your internal organs.

Also this film is a wasteland of bad late 1970s architecture, as it was filmed right before Post-Modern architecture saved us all from architectural cultural suicide. Just keep reciting your mantra, "Later on there would be good architecture. This was not the end of the world." Oh, and there's this insane fainting-gas stuff. The teens buy it at the local convenience store, no doubt. Another reviewer suggested the idea came from "Batman." I concur.

And i will offer a sparkly reward to anyone who can tell me the name of the book that Ida Lupino is reading on her bed when Ralph Meeker comes home after a long day in the armoured car industry. My TV was too small to zero in on it, but i have the feeling that if i could have read that title, i would have been rewarded by some sort of fabulous in-joke. Or maybe not.

Lloyd Nolan is okay. Ida Lupino is okay. Ralph Meeker is okay. The rest of this movie is insanely useless except to people who want to watch cars crash into one another over and over and over and over again.