Note from the start that I never saw the appeal of American Beauty. I never was a fan of that film. This movie, that I caught on a pay channel, reminded me of it with its quick wit and young character's woos juxapositioned against the adult family member's worries with the two overlapping quite often. The K.D. Lange soft butch lesbian looking leather jacket wearing bad GUY gets the most mileage out of HIS jimmy dean rebel role, stealing just about every scene that he is in. The Director is weirdly unconventional in allowing a couple 0f the characters to refer to the kidnapped boy as "really tiny" which is....weird. The kidnapped is a 13 year old who is small even for a Freshman. Both the children and the adults use wit and the audience is given credit for understanding between the lines. This script is not dumbed down like much of the fare released these days. Overall, a quite interesting film.