The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys | | Cast : | Kieran Culkin, Jena Malone | | Director : | Peter Care | | Studio : | Columbia Tristar Hom | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | January 01, 2002 | | DVD Released Date : | April 01, 2003 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | March 19, 2005 | | Summary | Look beyond the boring cover....as there's way more inside | Content
 | If you like Donnie Darko and Jena Malone you can give this a shot. Both movies refer partly to comics, both have the shining beauty of Jena Malone (please Jena, call me if you read this), and both dare to stap out of the ordinary. Most importantly, the movie is not childish as you would expect from the cover. I love the Mcfarlane art in it, and the story deals with alot of different aspects of life. In fact, you can watch it several times and you will realize this is way MORE than a stupid teen movie. In the end, it has some hidden poetry too (William Blake). It's nice to think of the concept behind this movie, as there are alot different contexts to recognize. Enjoy this little cult I would say...but forget about the poor cover.
Cheers to the world!! |
| Rating | | | Date | February 15, 2005 | | Summary | Watch this movie! | Content
| I loved this movie. The story focuses on a group of 4 friends who study in a catholic school and are troublemakers . they are in constant fight with the school nun (jodie foster)and plan on some mischiefe against her.
Along the story we get to know Margie (jena malone), who fransis falls in love with and we get to know what secret margie hides.
The boys also write a secret comic book in which each one of them is a hero, fighting against nun-zilla (the nun). THe movie has anime parts in it which show the story in the boys' eyes.
The main plot is that the boys want to bring a cougar to the nun's office and try to break in the zoo, which leads to tragedy.
There are various mentions of William Blake in the movie as the boys are Blake fans.
The acting in the movie is great and very realistic, except for Jodie foster who doesn't give a real feeling of the character.
But in whole its a wonderful movie you should watch! |
| Rating | | | Date | January 11, 2005 | | Summary | Thank you Shawn Watson for warning about non-anamorphic | Content
| Really loved this movie when I saw it on Showtime-3 in January 05. Almost hit the buy button on the DVD before seeing Shawn's warning that this is letterbox, but not anamorphic. This means that the black bars at top and bottom of picture are hard encoded, so that remaining image is only approx. 270 vertical pixels instead of the full 480. A big disappointment when viewed on a modern 16:9 screen, and thanks to Shawn for helping me keep this DVD out of my collection. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 14, 2004 | | Summary | ANGST, ADVENTURE, ANIMATION: COMPETENT BUT SCATTERED BLEND | Content
| Interesting theme: a group of four boys who go to a Catholic school are tired of squirming under the unflinching tyranny of Nun-zilla, their rigorous nun played by Jodie Foster.
With whom they cope by expressing their frustrations through comic-book sketches and imagining themselves as superheroes. The film uses this excuse to smoosh in some fascinating animation sequences illustrating emotional aspects of the story through the eyes of these kids.
This includes several sub-plots and sub-sub-plots: first romances, coming of age, friendship, control versus freedom, even hints of touchy issues like pedophilia (although no, there is nothing creepy actually manifested), etc.
The characters are convincing, and the performances are quite taut all round, so I've had a hard time putting an exact pulse on what the problem is with Altar Boys, because I liked many of the big picture things about it. Perhaps the film took off in too many directions at once. In bringing up all these themes and tropes, several topics are introduced and then frittered away for lack of time. Others are dwelled upon longer than they should have.
Yet, on the whole, Altar Boys works well as a well-done tale of baffled adolescents for whom imagination is not merely a dangerous diversion feared by conservative religious folk, but a veritable cathartic tool.
One minor annoyance with the DVD: the sound of dialogue is about 2 million decibels lower than the sound of the soundtrack that accompanies the animation interludes.
Recommended rental. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 19, 2004 | | Summary | Jodie Foster - how could you? | Content
| This was one of my favorite books growing up. Chris Fuhrman died of cancer at 31, and his brother found his final copy of it and got it published. It's moving and interesting and the characters are great.
This movie doesn't do it justice. Jodie Foster took parts from different characters and combined them into one--which is usually interesting, but it sort of fails here. Theres a funny moment here and there, but Emile Hersch lacks any depth and let's a good character down. Only Kieran Culkin and Jena Malone make it worth anything, as they are both tremendous for actors of their age.
This movie left out so much of the characters and the controversy of the times, it was boring, and jesus- the anime idea they decided to add in was just tacky and pathetic. |
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