Great acting, solid direction and some inventive presentation-- the protagonists re-imagine their lives in terms of comic-book fantasies, and we are treated to some wonderful traditional animation thereof-- are just the start in this complex picture.
The film follows a group of '60s Catholic schoolboys who hatch a plan to play a crazy prank on one of their hated teachers. The plan, of course, goes awry. What is interesting in this film-- besides watching Culkin, Hirsch and Foster working their usual magic-- is the complexity of theme going on behind the adolescent antics. The film looks at the purpose of fantasy, the meaning of faith, the dangers of testing boundaries, the unpleasantness of unfinished business, the nature of God and the question of how one interprets His authority. The question of original sin-- never clumsily and straightforwardly stated-- permeates the film, from Margie's awful revelations to Tim's mischief. The film's real genius is its ability to play with obviously religious ideas without really doing any preaching.
Behind all this, of course, is the Viet Nam war. As America loses its post-WWII innocence at the end of the 1960s, and as the flower-power generation realises that breaking the boundaries that authority sets ultimately breaks much more, so the boys learn what happens when people want to take God's power. When Tim Sullivan tells his teacher that William Blake's poetry is written "simply enough for a child," she responds with "so are the instructions for a handgun."
The film follows a group of '60s Catholic schoolboys who hatch a plan to play a crazy prank on one of their hated teachers. The plan, of course, goes awry. What is interesting in this film-- besides watching Culkin, Hirsch and Foster working their usual magic-- is the complexity of theme going on behind the adolescent antics. The film looks at the purpose of fantasy, the meaning of faith, the dangers of testing boundaries, the unpleasantness of unfinished business, the nature of God and the question of how one interprets His authority. The question of original sin-- never clumsily and straightforwardly stated-- permeates the film, from Margie's awful revelations to Tim's mischief. The film's real genius is its ability to play with obviously religious ideas without really doing any preaching.
Behind all this, of course, is the Viet Nam war. As America loses its post-WWII innocence at the end of the 1960s, and as the flower-power generation realises that breaking the boundaries that authority sets ultimately breaks much more, so the boys learn what happens when people want to take God's power. When Tim Sullivan tells his teacher that William Blake's poetry is written "simply enough for a child," she responds with "so are the instructions for a handgun."