Meninos de Deus

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys is one of those coming of age movies they don't make these days anymore - the story starts with a band of boys having fun and adventures, first love emerges, and in the end some tragic and dramatic turns shade the easy days of our young heroes. This fine movie reminds me of Bridge to Terabithia (starring young Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb) or Stand by Me (1986). Detached from today's politics and agendas, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys is a very funny, entertaining and touching movie. It's also fun to see Jena Melon, Kieran Culkin and the others in their young days. Jodie Foster and Vincent D'Onofrio are also rock solid as Sister and Father of the Catholic school, the young no-goods attend. Anyway, this one is a fine piece, and if you don't know it yet, put it on your to watch list - if you have any taste for such kind of movies. Exact rate: 7.5.

THE DANGEROUS LIVES OF ALTAR BOYS, based on the only novel of the late author Chris Fuhrman, gives a great portrayal of the ups and downs of adolescence. Despite veering wildly away from the novel, the film does a great job of transposing moments of boredom-inspired adolescent lunacy with aching transcendence (the scene in which Francis, the protagonist, akwardly talks to his dream girl Margie for the first time made MY heart flutter, and I haven't been 14 for a while!)Still, I wished that the scriptwriters had stuck closer to the book in some respects, especially detailing Francis' home life, which would have given greater insight into WHY he uses his drawing as an escape(and he has a heavy-duty reason to escape). For the guy who wondered in his review about Tim and Francis' home lives, let's just say that Francis' parents are WAY more disfunctional in the book than in the movie. Even with the parents' virtual absence from the movie, there are still great moments that were more or less transferred from book to screen: the scene in Margie's bedroom(although a bit more explicit in the book);Tim and Francis' finding the dying dog by the highway and Tim's subsequent soliloquy; the fateful journey into the wildlife preserve. Painful, beautiful, and true. See this one.

Group of Catholic schoolboys in the mid-1970s are obsessed with comic books, girls, and wreaking havoc on their most hated teacher, Sister Assumpta (Jodie Foster, in a nun's habit, somewhat uneasily cast but still quite good). A surprisingly rich, rewarding film about adolescence puts other, more popular films in this genre to shame. The scruffy, nostalgic era is captured nicely, and the young players really shine. Spiked with wonderful animated sequences, the film failed to catch on with its target audience yet is otherwise intelligently crafted and often very moving. Foster also served as co-producer. *** from ****

"The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" is one of the best books I've read in awhile, so I was pretty stoked to see how it translated to film. The good news is, this coming-of-age tale (revolving around the themes of first love and adolescent mischief) remains faithful to its source, while expanding (successfully, I think) upon what was written in the book. This worked very well in Terry Zwigoff's "Ghost World," but there are times in "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" where the tone threatens to go from comedy-drama, to flat-out drama, to flat-out comedy. It always manages to regain its balance, though. The story revolves around Francis Doyle (Emile Hirsch) and Tim Sullivan (Kieran Culkin, who's very good), altar boys with a comic-book fixation and a resentment of authority (represented here by Jodie Foster's peg-legged Mother Superior); also on hand is Francis' love interest, Margie (Jena Malone), who reveals herself to be a complicated, tragic figure.

As far as revisiting adolescence is concerned, "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" is accurate, funny, and even sad. However, it suffers from an over-emphasis on close-ups during key dramatic scenes, and the lead performance of Emile Hirsch is surprisingly weak (when he emotes, it looks exaggerated and fake). Overall, though, this is pretty good. 3.5 stars out of 5.

`The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys' is NOT, as you might expect, a film about predatory priests, but rather a slice-of-life tale about four malcontent Catholic schoolboys who spend most of their free time devising preposterously elaborate and life-threatening practical jokes to play on the faculty members of their school.

As a coming-of-age drama, the film is fairly conventional in its plotting - i.e. young boys, in their rebellion against the uncomprehending adult world, experiment with drugs, first love, sex and general rule breaking - although there is a tricky and touchy incest-related subplot that is handled with a certain amount of delicacy and sensitivity. The highlight of the movie is the outstanding performances delivered by youngsters Emile Hirsch, Kieran Culkin and Jena Malone, whom you might remember as the young Jodie Foster in `Contact.' In fact, Foster herself appears in this film (in addition to co-producing it) as the uptight nun, Sister Assumpta. Unfortunately, her character is probably the least well developed one in the film, a fact that seems more obvious than it otherwise might if an actress of Foster's caliber were not playing the part.

The film also displays a nice feeling for its early-70's setting and does a good job capturing the way young people actually speak and communicate (the cast members have their nonverbal expressions and gestures down beautifully as well). Working from the novel by Chris Fuhrman, screenwriters Jeff Stockwell and Michael Petroni, along with director Peter Care, interrupt the live action at regular intervals to provide animated sequences that are ostensibly derived from the anarchic superhero comic book on which the gifted boys are collaborating. We know that these sequences are intended to provide a kind of fantasy alternate universe for these troubled kids who seem to find no meaning in the restricted world of religion and rules in which they find themselves, but the fact is that these sections of the film, not very creative in themselves, merely serve to thrust us out of the story at crucial moments.

`The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys' is an odd and somewhat misleading title for this film, since most of the `danger' these boys face is, primarily, a product of their own stupidity and not of their religious upbringing. Indeed, the religious figures in the film are mainly cranky and/or ineffectual, not really dangerous. `The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys' is an uneven film, but the superb performances by its youthful cast members make it ultimately worth seeing.