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Review

For his first feature, music video director Peter Care adapted Chris Fuhrman's 1992 cult novel, published a year after the 31-year-old author died of cancer. His efforts would make the late Fuhrman proud. Beautifully shot, wonderfully acted and filled out with magical comic book fantasies - compliments of Spawn creator Todd McFarlane - The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys hits poignant notes not touched by any American coming-of-age film since Stand by Me.

Set in the '70s South, a quartet of Catholic school kids – including cheeky best friends Francis Doyle (Emile Hirsch) and Tim Sullivan (Kieran Culkin) – share the inescapable throes of adolescence. At school they're embroiled in battle with antagonizing super-strict, wooden-legged übernun, Sister Assumpta (Jodie Foster). Out of school, however, they prefer to do battle in worlds of comic book fantasy, creating bizarre superhero alter egos to populate them. For Francis, that magical world has begun to lack one thing: a comely heroine, which he finds in beautiful Margie Flynn (Jena Malone). Margie holds a secret that leads to a rift in both fantasy and reality between Francis and his friends; especially Tim, whose determination to make Sister Assumpta suffer could cross the line between prankishness and real-life danger.

Capturing the inarguable dichotomy of adolescence – an endless sense of possibility yet the accompanying sense of entrapment – Care's feature is one crafted with obvious devotion. Vincent D'Onofrio costars as a rough-edged school priest. And while Altar Boys' turns and fortunes are sometimes difficult and distressing, they can never be called untrue.

Lawrence Ferber, Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema