Boys (1996)

User Rating:

4.4/10   

Director:

Stacy Cochran

Writers:

Stacy Cochran (writer)
James Salter (short story "Twenty Minutes")

Release Date:

10 May 1996 (USA)

Genre:

Mystery | Drama | Romance

Tagline:

No one stays innocent forever.

Plot:

Patty Vare falls off a horse and is found unconscious by prep school student John Baker. He takes her to his dorm...

Plot Keywords:

Prep School | Teenage Boy | County Fair | Baseball Player | One Word Title

Cast

Winona Ryder	...	Patty Vare
Lukas Haas	...	John Baker Jr
John C. Reilly	...	Officer Kellogg Curry
James LeGros	...	Fenton Ray
Skeet Ulrich	...	Bud Valentine
Matt Malloy	...	Bartender
Spencer Vrooman	...	John Murphy
Charlie Hofheimer	...	John Cooke
Bill Sage	...	Officer Bill Martone
Marty McDonough	...	Teacher
Wiley Wiggins	...	John Phillips
Vivienne Shub	...	Frances
Russell Young	...	John Van Slieder
Christopher Pettiet	...	Jon Heinz
Catherine Keener	...	Jilly

Also Known As:

The Girl You Want (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for language, some sexuality and drug content.

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Argentina:13 | Germany:12 | Australia:M | USA:PG-13 | Singapore:PG | Iceland:12

Filming Locations:

Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Company:

Interscope Communications

Trivia:

Several shots take place in a coffee shop/dining area of the school. The location used was the real coffee shop of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, normally painted a modest off-white. The filmmakers had the coffe shop painted a bizarre orange color for the production, then painted back to white after they were finished.

Quotes:

John Baker Jr: God, are you always like this?
Patty: Ya, I'm always like this.

Soundtrack:

DOO WACKA DO

I liked this movie...

I liked this movie. Imagine a teenager, named John, the typical guy who goes to the last year of high school and doesn't quite know what to do with his life. Then, one day, he finds a beautiful woman lying on the floor in a field who, apparently, is on the run for something she did and takes her to his room. It's a boarding school, he might get kicked out, but he doesn't care; he just wants to help her. The look on his face when the woman first wakes up and the teenager walks towards her, is the first sign of a magical performance by Lukas Hass; it's a look that combines the excitement of having this woman in his bed and the curiosity of wanting to know what she might have done.

The woman is called Patty Vare, played by the wonderful Winona Ryder in the kind of role she knows by heart but never forgets to add new elements to. Here, besides appearing to be somewhere other than the real world (she fell off a horse before John found her and doesn't remember much), she masters the 'look'; that seductive look only she can achieve and makes anyone go crazy to the point that they would do anything for her. Well, at least that's the effect it had on John in the movie…And on me, of course.

But don't get things wrong. I personally don't think "Boys" is a romantic movie, even if it was writer/director Stacy Cochran's intention. I would call it some kind of an 'age analysis'. Yes, there are romance related moments that make you smile because Winona is an expert on the subject, but this time her character Patty is an expert too: on men. So the study the film tries to make is what can happen when a woman of Patty's experience meets a kid like John in an extreme situation.

That's why Cochran shows us flashbacks of what happened to Patty before meeting John; they're necessary for us to know the kind of woman she is. On the other hand, we don't know anything about John but the fact that he has a bad relationship with his father (a respectable Chris Cooper). But we don't need to know, because we realize when he is with Patty; when we hear what he says and see what he does.

There's a scene in the town fair, where Patty and John are together in the merry-go-round. The final moment of that scene explains why I liked this movie, and those are the scenes in the movie that work. Not the police sub-plot (led by a convincing John C. Reilly), not John's relationship with his friends at school (although some scenes are good to watch more of Hass' perfect work), not even the conflict with his father.

There's another scene really worth paying attention too: a chat in a table where a beautiful light from the window makes Patty seem so vulnerable. Luckily for us, this is a movie where we have the final world; about whether we believe the characters or not and about the inconclusive and far-fetched ending. Yes, it may not honor reality itself, but "Boys" honors its title; and I liked that. I liked this movie.