Mutant Reviewers from Hell do
"Hey, it's the altar boys. Here to get altered?"

2002 R / Comedy Drama Directed by: Peter Care Starring: Jodie Foster, Emile Hirsch, Kieran Culkin

Tagline

One of the most inventive, funny coming-of-age films in years!

Summary Capsule

Kids draw comic books, fight the nunnery establishment and then get up to no good.

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Amazon.com: DVD | Amazon.com: Soundtrack

DnaError's Rating: Snore.
DnaError's Review: "I hate John Knowles." When Lisa Simpson said this line, thousands of high schoolers agreed. John Knowles' "A Separate Peace" is inflicted on students year around across the country. His dense, chintzy prose (masking a weak story) surrounds hurredly drawn characters, labored metaphors, and huge stinking mounds of pretension and "meaning". It's enough to make a person never want to read again. Literature classes are full of books like "A Separate Peace", books like "The Dangerous Lives Of Alter Boys", heavy-handed, gauzy treatments of boyhood and innocents marked by jarring attempts at profundity. They make for bad reading and even worse movies.

"The viewer is outright punch drunk after being hit in the head so many times."

The movie is a sloppy affair. We aren't given many character motives, even little less in way of background or characterization. The plot lists along from point to absurd point, pausing for drawn out scenes of boyhood innocence before randomly shooting along. There is no attempt to make these characters likable, relatable or even make them KNOWN to us in any way. The director appears to have been a fan of the book, and assumes everyone else is as well, which dispells the need to say... tell us the character's names. The plot, what little there is, stems from a device so absurd to defies explanation. Blake's poetry factors in too, bad sign when a movie has to crib from someone else to make their point for them. The movie's plot is warped around a (very) over-literal interpretation of a Blake line. I don't want to give it away, but I don't think that when Blake mentioned a tiger burning bright, he didn't mean an ACTUAL tiger.

Its poor attempts at poetry that mar the movie more then anything. Every significant scene is telegraphed from a mile away. The viewer is outright punch drunk after being hit in the head so many times. The Dangerous Lives Of Alter Boys even has a reference to Knowles' "A Separate Peace", a broken arm by one of the main characters. Agh! Damn you John Knowles! From the depths of the internet I stab at thee!

Is it wrong to think that Foster looks TOTALLY HOT as a nun? He's ready for the Booting "Pray all you like, this F is never turning into an A"

Didja Notice? [some sources: IMDb]

• A G.I. Joe comic book is seen in Sister Assumpta's drawer of confiscated items, but G.I. Joe comic books did not appear until 1983 (after the film was set).
• The poem quoted in the funeral is found in William Blake's "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience", not in "Marriage of Heaven and Hell".
• Movie takes place in the 1970s but when the boys are riding their bikes to buy comic books, they drive past a house with a late '80s Buick parked in its driveway.

Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?

We have no idea (but we'll let you know soon!)

Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]

The movie is based is a book by Chris Fuhrman of the same name.

The animated sequences where directed by Todd McFarlane of Spawn fame.

Groovy Quotes

Francis Doyle: That's all?
Newsie: Man, that's enough to melt an elephant.
Tim: Excuse my friend. He thinks he wants to melt two elephants.

Sister Assumpta: Blake. A little advance don't you think?
Tim: Not really Sister. It's written simply enough for a six year old.
Sister Assumpta: So are the instructions for a handgun.

Tim: I burned all the skin off my hands. I can barely curl my fingers now.
Francis Doyle: There goes your sex life.

Sister Assumpta: But make no mistake, the culprits will be fingered. I will finger the culprits.

Joey Anderson: It's Major Screw going at it with an evil warrior babe.
Tim: Going at what?
Joey Anderson: 69.
Wade Scalisi: That looks more like 47.

Naturalist: The head of the sexually aroused adult gobbler can change into a variety of shades of red, white and blue. Yeah, it's a very patriotic bird.

Newsie: Hey it's the altar boys. Here to get altered?

If you liked this movie, try these:

• Dead Poets Society
• Ghost World
• Lords of Dogtown