Telling Lies in America

Before he became the arch-hack of Hollywood screenwriting (Showgirls, anyone?), Joe Eszterhas, if his quasi-autobiographical Telling Lies in America can be believed, was a teenage immigrant outcast in early-'60s Cleveland adrift in the rock-and-roll-addled backwaters of the American Dream. Directed by Guy Ferland, Lies does conjure the angst and atmosphere of pre-Beatles teen culture and the peculiar agonies of coming of age in an all-male Catholic high school. In its second half, however, it sinks into half-baked clichés and platitudes.

Brad Renfro, as uncertain as his Hungarian accent, is Karchy, who hopes to achieve popularity and success by acting as a gofer for Billy Magic (Kevin Bacon in a grittily layered performance), the soiled and cynical DJ at a local radio station. In fact, Karchy is the unwitting bagman for Billy's payola (even Catholic high-school students in the '60s weren't that naive), and he ultimately has to choose between surrogate dad Billy's glitz and real dad Maximilian Schell's hoky straight-and-narrow. Uncompelling despite its relentless goldie-oldie soundtrack, Telling Lies doesn't uncover any truths. At the Janus.

-- Peter Keough