THE DANGEROUS LIVES OF ALTAR BOYS

With a title like The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, it’s no wonder Peter Care’s coming-of-age film is plenty preoccupied with issues of transgression, imagination, and sex. It also hints at a gleeful dark humor that’s too often unfulfilled by the story of a pair of eighth-grade Catholic-schoolers (Kieran Culkin and Emile Hirsch) who choose rebellion and animated comic-book fantasy as an antidote to the stultifying edicts of their schoolmistress (Jodie Foster). ”Altar Boys” wants to be a poignant, even melancholy tale, but its attempt at emotional complexity reads as frustrating incoherence.