SPOILERS. A coming of age movie that raises questions about just how whacky a kid can be without someone in a white coat paying attention. Reminds me a little of other movies in which people walked the edge, "Sterile Cuckoo," for instance.
The kid, LaBoeuf, is in high school and is something of an outsider. He makes enemies and he makes a friend, sort of. He's ordinary looking but seems to know everything about everything -- from flowers to art and military history.
He'd give all this up in one big jiffy if his friend's sister, Amy Smart, a blonde graduate student who is so stunningly gorgeous that she is to physical beauty what LaBoeuf is to intellectual prowess, would only give him a tumble.
And she does. A little anyway, after an especially bad hair day when she needs a little cuddling and reassurance. The problem of course is that this little kiss of sympathy means little to her, but emotionally he's working at about at his grade level.
In the end he more or less grows up and starts dating the plain but rather engaging girl of his own age who works at the same supermarket.
There are some subplots thrown in. LaBoeuf's father managed to lose all the kid's college money so the kid hates him. Kathleen Quinlan is the mother and there are tearful scenes in which she tells LaBoeuf that he, LaBoeuf, hates the man she loves. Much of this seems to belong to a different movie. And I'm not sure Dad deserves much in the way of admiration, having deprived his own kid of an education at Dartmouth and doomed him to a community college.
For that matter I'm not sure that Tabby, the blonde he falls for, deserves his adoration. In a frantic last-minute talk with her, when she's about to be married, he tells her that the groom is not good enough for her because he's just some kind of would-be industrialist while she is an artist. I missed the first few minutes, but her work as we see it later, as she plays with "diffusion" -- well, there are more staggeringly gripping abstracts that have been done by elephants, literally.
I kind of liked Tabby's boy friend though. He's tall, muscular, and handsome and looks stupid. When he and LaBoeuf first meet, LaBoeuf comes up with some insane riff about how his job at the supermarket makes him a caterpillar industrialist. The boy friend whistles and looks puzzled, but then anyone would in the face of this uncrafted explication of what it means to be a "pupa." And when we meet the boy friend later, for a minute or two, he seems like a genuinely nice guy who admits to having rented his tuxedo and who is really in love with Tabby. I had the feeling that he and Tabby -- not just Amy Smart but ANYBODY named Tabby -- would get along just fine. Even the divorce would be what is called "amicable."
Too many things are going on in the movie, but LaBoeuf comes across as a kid who will eventually grow up and be a success in life once he is able to differentiate between make-believe and realpolitik. It could easily have been worse.
The kid, LaBoeuf, is in high school and is something of an outsider. He makes enemies and he makes a friend, sort of. He's ordinary looking but seems to know everything about everything -- from flowers to art and military history.
He'd give all this up in one big jiffy if his friend's sister, Amy Smart, a blonde graduate student who is so stunningly gorgeous that she is to physical beauty what LaBoeuf is to intellectual prowess, would only give him a tumble.
And she does. A little anyway, after an especially bad hair day when she needs a little cuddling and reassurance. The problem of course is that this little kiss of sympathy means little to her, but emotionally he's working at about at his grade level.
In the end he more or less grows up and starts dating the plain but rather engaging girl of his own age who works at the same supermarket.
There are some subplots thrown in. LaBoeuf's father managed to lose all the kid's college money so the kid hates him. Kathleen Quinlan is the mother and there are tearful scenes in which she tells LaBoeuf that he, LaBoeuf, hates the man she loves. Much of this seems to belong to a different movie. And I'm not sure Dad deserves much in the way of admiration, having deprived his own kid of an education at Dartmouth and doomed him to a community college.
For that matter I'm not sure that Tabby, the blonde he falls for, deserves his adoration. In a frantic last-minute talk with her, when she's about to be married, he tells her that the groom is not good enough for her because he's just some kind of would-be industrialist while she is an artist. I missed the first few minutes, but her work as we see it later, as she plays with "diffusion" -- well, there are more staggeringly gripping abstracts that have been done by elephants, literally.
I kind of liked Tabby's boy friend though. He's tall, muscular, and handsome and looks stupid. When he and LaBoeuf first meet, LaBoeuf comes up with some insane riff about how his job at the supermarket makes him a caterpillar industrialist. The boy friend whistles and looks puzzled, but then anyone would in the face of this uncrafted explication of what it means to be a "pupa." And when we meet the boy friend later, for a minute or two, he seems like a genuinely nice guy who admits to having rented his tuxedo and who is really in love with Tabby. I had the feeling that he and Tabby -- not just Amy Smart but ANYBODY named Tabby -- would get along just fine. Even the divorce would be what is called "amicable."
Too many things are going on in the movie, but LaBoeuf comes across as a kid who will eventually grow up and be a success in life once he is able to differentiate between make-believe and realpolitik. It could easily have been worse.