Look, you don't watch every movie because it's a good movie. "Boys" – the title has wandered in from some gay porno flick shopping list -- is for all intents and purposes a bad movie and even nice film critics have been mean to it. But if this is a failure, this is not your average failure. Oh, no. It has moments, and an interesting, borderline cultish, cast. Skeet Ulrich is almost forgotten, but in his fleeting appearances he has a dysfunctional neediness, luminous sex appeal, a scary attraction – you see that also in "As Good As It Gets," where he robs and beats up Greg Kinnear. There's something dangerous – and expendable – about Skeet. We may think of John C. Reilly in PT Anderson's "Magnolia," and see that same homely touching appeal on idle here in his Maryland State Police role. This was probably the only time the mercurial, offbeat Lucas Haas was conventionally cute enough to match up with a pretty -- at times quite beautiful -- girl like Winona. And her dazed, out-of-it quality – she's clearly a young lady who makes nothing but wrong choices in men -- contributes to the curiously touching moments the two have in the amusement park when the high school boy briefly but intensely falls for the 25-year-old and proposes marriage and eternal loyalty and they kiss sweetly and the rest of the world disappears. That's the high point. Now, there's nothing more tedious than the boys in the opening segment nattering at each other, threatening to rat on each other, but curious to get in on any trouble that's going to come down—but the way they behave and look in this movie is completely natural and believable. Like most real schoolboys they're likely to bore each other to death before they'll ever enter into some sort of Lord of the Flies adventure. Chris Cooper – what is he doing here? He's playing an archetypal father, the one we don't see in "Dead Poets Society," the flipside of his twisted military dad in "American Beauty." James LeGros and Catherine Keener complete the surprising cast. Using a classic college campus – St. Johns, Annapolis -- for a fancy prep school works and heightens the posh effect. The movie doesn't altogether work otherwise. It's energy is sluggish; it has no drive.. But you come back to it looking for something that didn't come together, but might have, because some choice ingredients were there. And won't come this way again.. Check out Haas in "Johns", dated the same year, with David Arquette for another good offbeat role, a wilder, quirkier one that also seems to fit him like a soft old glove. He's never had the role he deserves, but what an actor. James Salter, whose story this is based on, is a very fine writer. The music isn't inappropriate; it's just obtrusively loud, the way schoolboys would play it, if they weren't being properly supervised.

This flawed film came out of nowhere the other night. We don't know if it ever was released commercially, but it appears to have gone straight to video. As much as we wanted it to be better, "Boys" suffers from a screen play that doesn't fully expand on its characters and leaves us wishing and waiting for more.Stacy Cochran, who adapted the short story by James Salter, sets her story in what appears to be a prep school in New England. This is a school for privileged kids sent by their families to get an education. By having attended this institution will probably ensure the rich boys access to prestige colleges and universities later on.Into this quiet background another darker story happens involving the rich, careless and perhaps promiscuous Patty Vare, who has had a terrible experience when a baseball player takes her on a night ride that is leading to sex, when the car plunges into a river. Patty, who is questioned by the police, is seen riding her horse as the memory of the previous night comes haunting her memory. In attempting a jump over a fence, she and the horse fall and she is hurt.Enter John Baker, a student from the school, who is alerted by another student about the young woman he has found in a field nearby. John decides to take her into his dorm against house rules. They end up going away, ending in the county fair in a night that ends up in a romantic note, but Patty. realizing she wants not to implicate John, disappears. John's parents come to the school and they are helpless to put any sense into his head. That morning Patty and John meet again in the police station. It's clear they have found one another and no one will separate them.The two main roles, Patty and John, are given excellent readings by Winona Ryder and Lukas Haas. Both show great chemistry in their scenes together. Unfortunately, other characters don't fare that well. There is Fenton, who helps Patty escape, whose presence is never justified well. As played by James LeGros, he is an enigma. His girlfriend, Jilly, is acted by Catherine Keener in a role where she is totally wasted. Chris Cooper and Jessica Harper play John's angry parents.The film is not a total failure because of our interest in Patty and John. Perhaps with another director, and a better screen play a better film would have resulted, although Ms. Cochran, and her cinematographer, Robert Elswith, give the production a lovely sheen with the local color of the country in autumn, the county fair seen from a distance, and the staid prep school.

"Boys" tells a flimsy story to which Cochran tries to add mystery by keeping information from the audience and revealing it piecemeal via flashback. Cheap shot. Ryder is found unconscious, after being thrown from horseback, by a boarding school student (Haas) who takes her to his room (yeah, right), instead of the obvious choice, the hospital. You know, HOSPITAL...where you take injured people for professional medical care. Duh. Anyway, this dumbassed flick has a list of negatives too long to go into here. File "Boys" in the boys room and don't forget to flush. (D)

I finally had the opportunity to view Boys. Throughout the movie I kept wondering who these characters were and when the storyline would start. The movie lacked the development of both. Before I knew it the movie was over and the credits were running. Did I miss something? Was there a hidden message only for a teenage audience? I truly don't think so.