November 28, 2003
By Derek Wilson
Star rating: ***
Director: Pete Jones
Cast: Aidan Quinn, Bonnie Hunt, Kevin Pollak, Brian Dennehy, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Adiel Stein, Mike Weinberg
Running time: 94 min
Age restriction: PG
This simple but at times charming little movie had its well-intended origins in Project Greenlight, the hunt for new talent initiated by Academy Award-winning screenwriters Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.
Cynics may carp at writer-director Pete Jones's naiveté, but his screenplay represents a genuine attempt at trying to capture the innocence of children attempting to negotiate the labyrinthine byways of force-fed religious instruction.
Wisely, Jones has also set his screenplay in marginally less cynical times. It is the 1970s and his focus is on a working-class family of devout Catholics of Irish origin in suburban Chicago.
The O'Malleys are a large family (surprise, surprise) who fill their full-size Ford station wagon whenever they go out. To church, for instance.
The head of the house is Joe O'Malley, a hard-drinking, unquestioning man's man who is a fireman and believes this would be a noble, rewarding line of work for his sons to follow. However, the eldest son, Patrick, has an intellect and a mind of his own.
His little brother, Pete, however, is still in the powerful grip of a Catholic school. As school is breaking up for the summer holidays, a stern nun takes the naughty little Pete aside and warns him to "follow the path of the Lord, and not that of the Devil".
Imbued with the nun's admonition, the unquestioning little fellow sets himself a religious task for the holidays: he determines to convert a Jew to Catholicism
. Pete visits the local synagogue and puts his proposal to the tolerant, good-natured Rabbi Jacobsen.
Fortunately, Jones tempers the burgeoning religious malarkey with a sobering reality check: Pete makes friends with the rabbi's little boy, Danny, who is not well. Reality effectively compels Pete to reconsider his summer task, but here Jones's screenplay comes seriously adrift.
Instead of introducing a questioning probe into religious instruction of the young, he opts for the soothing effect of schmaltz.
The performances don't demand hard work. Aidan Quinn is comfortable playing daddy Joe, but Bonnie Hunt is more fun as his cheerful drudge of a wife.
Eddie Kaye Thomas of the American Pie comedies (his character bonks Stiffler's eternally randy mother) plays the long-suffering Patrick, who barely tolerates his father's aggressively simplistic outlook on life.
Brian Dennehy plays a rather forbidding priest and prompts you to wonder what he may be hiding. The best performance comes from Kevin Pollak as the endearing mensch of a rabbi.
The little boys, played by Adiel Stein (Pete) and Mike Weinberg (Danny) are sweet enough, though they verge on the mechanical, with dialogue on the level of homespun television.
If Jones had set his screenplay among boys a little older than these, the movie might have been more satisfying intellectually, but as it is it is easily digested pabulum for film-goers disinclined to be made to think.
  
 
|
