La confraternita

What a boring movie. Leaves one wondering if there ever was an initial storyline. I expected a sleeper. The only sleeper was me, half way through it! Don't waste your time or money on this dog. I usually enjoy Treat Williams. Not even he could save the fraternity of bad writing and acting. Don't waste your time.

This film is a bad mix of Cruel Intentions, Dead Poets Society and School Ties. A group of 5 boys who "don't respect tradition" form a secret club which they, unoriginally, dub The Circle. At first the Circle just does good deads and susses out the bad at their preppy all boys boarding school, Runcie. (which in itself looks like the lamest, cheapest boarding school out there) But soon, the Circle's powers go to their heads. After one of their own, I'll call him Dummy, is caught stealing test answers and cheating, everything goes haywire. The other 4 members suspect someone of ratting out Dummy. It turns out the boy they suspect is a very bright, black (though you can barely tell with how light his skin is), picked on boy who also happens to be one of the members roomates. Now here is where it gets complicated. The filmakers seem to not be able to choose which plot they want to follow. The murder plot? The plot of the boy, I'll call him Lead Dummy (played by Robin Dunne, king of bad preppy movies. see Cruel Intentions 2 and The Skulls 2) who is trying to find out who killed his roomate, the sex scandal that's going on with the headmaster or the 5 other stupid stories they try, but don't succeed in starting during the movie.

Don't expect anything good, suspensful, or surprising in this movie. But rent it for a laugh, and then go rent the movies it tried so desperately to copy for some good viewing.

My expectations for this movie were a lot lower than what this in the end really was. It was not excellent, but quite good and occasionally even exciting. The plot was not too complicated and it was easy to follow. Your life won´t change if you watch this, but it´s nice entertainment for an ordinary evening when you don´t have nothing to do. The actors were pretty good, too.

On the surface, this looks like it might be an edgy or gritty drama about the seedy underside of prep school. What it ends up being is another nearly pointless exercise in bad writing, hack acting, overly melodramatic devices, and just plain goofiness. The plot has holes so big that you can drive a truck, no make that a train, through them. Everyone here is sleazy in some way or another, including our group of heroes, who are cheats and bullies. But then I guess they are okay compared to the real baddies, who are killers and transvestites. What a giant load of ****, and the thing that was fun was to see just how ludicrous, silly and offensive it could get. As one example of many, we have here a group of 5 students who secretly run the whole school through wiretaps, night heists, and coercion. Yeah, that's easy to believe! It ought to have been called Mafia Prep Academy.

Road-kill stew of Sculls (2000), Cheaters (2000/I) and Scent of a woman (1992)(the end)- spiced with some ingredients from Dead Poets Society (1989). It does not help that Robin Dunne resembles Joshua Jackson. Horrible music.