The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys

I hate false advertising. Which could be why I am not recommending The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, a film that is neither dangerous nor lively. Instead, it’s deadly dull and entirely pedestrian.

The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys tells the story of four boys living somewhere in the south, sometime in the 1970s. The nonspecific nature of the entire film continues into the characterization of the boys, two of whom disappear 30 minutes into the film. The main boys, played by Kieran Culkin and Emile Hirsch, aren’t all that more compelling than the ones written out. They are the predictable blend of dangerously immature mischief (Culkin) and the level-headed one who gets talked into everything, knows it’s wrong and does it anyway just for some fun (Hirsch). Their main interests seem to be mischief and comics. It’s both that get them in trouble with Sister Assumpta (Jodie Foster, who also produced the film). After she catches them drawing an obscene and profane comic book with her as the main villain, something called Nunzilla, the boys devise a plan to humiliate her and raise their cool quotient in the process. Obstacles come in the form of the departure of two of the boys (the plan needs all four of them) and the girl (Jena Malone) with a dark secret with whom Hirsch falls in love.

As I was watching it, I kept wondering if all of this was more compelling in Chris Fuhrman’s book. The film, the first to be directed by veteran music video director Peter Care, has the feel of other book-to-film transitions when you know there must have been more in the book but for whatever reason it gets chopped out in the screenplay. It might have made the film more compelling to dive deeper into the relationships of all the boys rather than just skimming the surface. But then they probably wouldn’t have time for the pointless, but well-designed, animation of Spawn creator, Todd McFarlane, which is supposed to represent the wild imaginations of the boys and their elaborate fantasies of violence and vengeance against Nunzilla, but really it seems to be there to make the film longer than the after school special it so accurately resembles.

The acting ranges from competent performances from Malone, who has no real role to play here but tries anyway, and Culkin, playing an all-too-familiar role in the best way possible, to a downright weird turn by Foster, whose Irish accent disappears after her first scene so as not to distract us from her one-legged hobbling. It’s one of the few times in her career she seems to be completely lost.

Which is sadly exactly what this film is — lost. Delayed over a year so that the animation could be finished, maybe the filmmakers should have used that time to rethink the whole enterprise. They may have been able to create something better than what is on the screen here.

Submitted 25 July 02. Posted 26 July 02.