Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12562 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-11-05
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com
A refreshing and honest portrayal of adolescent Catholic boys. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys follows Tim (Kieran Culkin) and Francis (Emile Hirsch) as they engage in aimless vandalism and mockery--not from malice but boredom. Sadly, the theft of a religious icon and a plan to kidnap a cougar result in far more serious consequences than either boy intends. The authenticity of the characters and dialogue make the movie work; both script and performances are genuine and consistently surprising. Jena Malone, as a troubled girl who gets involved with Francis, is particularly good, but the whole cast (which includes Jodie Foster and Vincent D'Onofrio) does excellent work. In capturing both the harm and the good that teenagers can do, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys transcends the usual rebellious-kids storyline. The movie features animated segments that depict Francis's fantasy life, created by Todd McFarlane (Spawn). --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
Catholic boys and their comic books get a thorough going over in Peter Care's rite-of-passage pop drama. Set in the seventies, the movie concerns a group of bored classmates out for trouble. The material is played a bit somberly by its cast, which includes Kieran Culkin and, as a mean-spirited, peg-legged nun, Jodie Foster. Although the scenes are packed with predictable teen-age angst, there's an anxious snap to many of the moments, and the director's reflection on a more disciplined era is quietly comic. Care rounds out his story with animated sequences by Todd McFarlane; they present an Expressionist, adolescent spin on the events that helps the film overcome some of its less inspired moralizing. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Not So Innocent
The Secret Lives of Altar Boys can be pretty raw in language and deeds, perhaps a bit preteniously so in places, and yet, it merely sets the stage for who these boys are and where they are on the evolutionary scale. There is a tendency in the beginning to show that these boys are rather "charmed", which makes it that much more startling when their luck runs out in a rather grusome manner. Vincent D'Onofrio does a fine job playing the priest who is quite willing to endure the misbehavior of the boys, until he gets an inside look of how they see him. Then, he takes a more serious tone, searching for where he went wrong with the lads? While not trying to give away the ending, the "loss" isn't really dealt with in a satisfying way. One would have hoped that a stronger moral character developed as a result, rather than the launching of what might have been in that age the same as becoming a rock star today. There was a feeling that the character suffered, yes, but failed to "grow".

This movie will not fail to entertain. It's quite believable. In fact, in places, it's "award worthy" - especially when they find a dog by the roadside - excellently done!

This was given 5 stars because when it was good it was so good that it's not to be missed. This is an "adult" movie...definately not for young children.

A must see!!!
i first saw this movie maybe...5 years ago...and i still enjoy watching it from time to time...this movie shows the lives of a group of alter boys as they go through school and the everyday jams...the acting is great...the story is great...i love everything about this movie...the ending is pretty sad...i think this movie will make most people laugh about the stuff they did when they were younger...(not to say that anyone ever did the stuff from the movie...but just referring to stupid stuff that kids do)

def get this movie as a rental or just pick it up used and watch it with some friends

Not bad once it gets going.
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (Peter Care, 2002)

I wanted to hate this movie. And for the first half, I did a pretty good job. There's just something about any film touched by a member of the Culkin clan (the last movie I remember seeing with a Culkin in it that I really liked was Jacob's Ladder) that manages to rub me the wrong way; it's like someone took a whole slew of Albert Brooks clones and put them into a single family. By the end of this, however, I admit I was hooked.

The story centers on Francis Doyle (Lords of Dogtown's Emile Hirsch) and Tim Sullivan (Kieran Culkin), two Catholic-school students who are part of a small collective of artists working on a comic book called The Atomic Trio. The comic book, which is pretty nasty by any standards, is considered positively obscene by the teachers, when they discover it, in no small part because one of the villains is modeled after Sister Assumpta (Jodie Foster). When she gets hold of the thing, she takes it to the headmaster, Father Casey (Voncent D'Onofrio), whose boys-will-be-boys attitude doesn't make her terribly happy. Not that that matters to the kids, who retaliate by planning the biggest prank the school's ever seen. Of course, they hold the previous record, having nicked a statue from the school's bell tower and hidden it in a nearby mausoleum, which has become the group's de facto clubhouse. Everything gets more complex when Francis finds himself attracted to fellow student Margie Flynn (Jena Malone of the forthcoming The Ruins).

About the best thing I can say about the first half of the film is that it's not terrible. It's competently done, but it's all setup, and it's not very interesting setup at that. Once they start planning their harebrained prank, however, things pick up nicely, and we finally start getting a feeling for these characters. Screenwriters Jeff Stockwell and Michael Petroni open the storyline up a bit, introducing us to a more interesting batch of folks than we've met previously (namely Margie's very off-the-wall family, who despite getting almost no screen time steal the show) and giving us a lot more insight into most of the characters we already know. The odd exception is Sister Assumpta, who remains as much a two-dimensional villain as the artistic renderings of her done by her students.

In the end, it's not bad, but it could have been a great deal better, and the second half is proof of that. ** ½