Boys movie review & film summary (1996)

And she does, as we discover in carefully parceled-out flashbacks, which I wound not dream of describing. Given what she knows, it is a little startling that she would be calm enough to engage in cute dialogue with Baker, and some snuggling on a hillside near the carnival, which leads, hardly convincingly, to a mild sex scene.

One of the qualities of “Before Sunrise” was its reluctance to rely on plot standbys like a sex scene (the couple spend the night together, but between discreet dissolves that leave it up to us to decide what, if anything, happened). Here the sex seems more obligatory than motivated, and the entire apparatus of the flashbacks, the cops, the missing car, etc., is of no interest.

One curious detail. The movie seems to want to work in material about Baker's relationship with his father, but doesn't know how to do it. There is a brave telephone call in which the son makes a declaration of independence (what he says sounds more like a high school essay than real dialogue), but not long after he's knocking on his parents' door. And when we meet the father, he doesn't fit at all. He's inappropriately hostile, aggressive and mean, taking up so much psychic space that the movie should have either dealt with him, or dropped him.

“Boys” must think audiences are not very bright. Any movie like this faces two choices, early in the development process: (1) Make the characters original and interesting, and write them some dialogue worth hearing, or (2) Trick up the plot with tired cliches, lurid flashbacks and phony suspense, throw in a little sex, and have a perfunctory happy ending. “Boys” takes the dumb way out.

A footnote. Before I had seen the film, someone described it to me as, “Winona Ryder is hidden in a boys' school.” This sounded like a splendid premise for a movie, and I thought of several story possibilities, as indeed you can, too. Why is it only the people who make the movies who do their thinking on automatic pilot?