Silly subplots muck up coming-of-age drama 'December Boys'

• "December Boys" doesn't cater to Daniel Radcliffe's star status as you might expect. Longtime TV and movie director Ron Hardy keeps the story an ensemble project, with an ego-less Radcliffe seamlessly integrated into the cast and nicely equipped with an Australian accent.

In this Down Under drama, the erstwhile Harry Potter plays one of four best chums who live at an orphanage during the early 1960s. Maps (Radcliffe), the eldest, has a birthmark resembling a map. Spark (Christian Byers) loves to make mischief. Misty (Lee Cormie) is the young, cute, sensitive one. Spit (James Frazier) possesses a talent for gross expectoration.

The four lads get to spend the summer at an oceanside home run by a kindly middle-aged couple (Jack Thompson and Kris McQuade). There, the friends become competitive the moment that a young couple arrives and lets it slip that they might be interested in adopting a son. Which one?

Hardy's drama, based on a Michael Noonan novel, has its heart in the right spot, but mucks up the story with silly subplots. One character comes down with cancer to little dramatic purpose. A wild horse keeps popping up on the shore like some unfathomable metaphor. Misty experiences religious hallucinations involving nuns. Then there's a Moby Dick subplot about a legendary big fish that a grumpy guy has been trying to catch all his life.

These subplots add complications, but not complexity, to what should have been a simple, direct drama about four boys who learn about life and themselves during this one special summer.

"December Boys" opens today at Piper's Alley in Chicago. Rated PG-13 (sexual situations, nudity, underage smoking and drinking). 105 minutes. ..

• Double the grossness factor of the hit "Superbad," then suck out anything remotely resembling cleverness or a sense of humor, and you'd roughly get Ryan Shiraki's "Freshman Orientation."

In the first 15 minutes of this crass act, cast members throw up on each other, pass sonic-boom wind, masturbate, fatally auto-asphyxiate, deal with menstruation and start a monotonous obsession with limp fellatio jokes.

The familiar plot revolves around another big lie perpetrated by a guy to gain favor with a girl. Cute college freshman Clay Adams (Sam Huntington, Jimmy Olsen in last year's "Superman Returns") strikes out with campus girls, until he pretends to be gay so that a sorority hottie named Amanda (Kaitlin Doubleday) will notice him.

He doesn't realize that Amanda's sorority has devised a cruel trick, a reversal of Neil LaBute's "In the Company of Men." The girls must get certain male students to fall in love with them before crushing their hearts. Amanda draws a gay to seduce. Her best pal Jewish Jessica (slumming indie fixture Heather Matarazzo) draws a Muslim to destroy.

Huntington's Clay comes off way too confident and savvy to be a convincing freshman, while former "SNL" star Rachel Dratch earns sympathy chuckles as "The Drunk Chick," a thankless role requiring her to troll through the campus offering sexual favors of the oral persuasion. How John Goodman wound up in a bit part as a gay bartender remains one of 2007's biggest cinematic mysteries.

"Freshman Orientation" opens today at the Century Centre Cinema in Chicago. Rated R (sexual situations, nudity, language, drug use). 91 minutes. One-half star

• If you watch Griffin Dunne's "Fierce People," prepare to be savagely beaten by heavy-handed symbols and abused by blunt metaphors. Not even an exquisite performance by the amazing Diane Lane softens the explosion of this bomb.

A weird combination of a coming-of-age drama and a social class critique, "Fierce People" stars Lane as Liz Earl, the drug-addicted masseuse mother of Anton Yelchin's doe-eyed adolescent, Finn Earl. Facing eviction from their New York apartment, Liz makes a phone call and voila! A limo whisks them to the New Jersey estate of super-wealthy Ogden Osborne (Donald Sutherland), who owes Liz a big favor.

On the grounds, Liz and Finn get a glimpse of how the other half of .0005 percent of Americans live. Liz gets paid to massage Ogden's aging body and ego. Finn takes a job sorting Ogden's personal effects. Finn also befriends Ogden's college-age grandson (Chris Evans) and falls in love with Maya (Kristen Steward), a girl out of his league.

"Fierce People" goes awry the moment it juxtaposes the actions of Ogden's rich "tribe" with those of primitive Third World tribes, right down to their strange customs and savagery. Then the movie goes more wrong when it lurches into a whodunit after Finn gets attacked and sodomized by a masked assailant. (Note to novelist/screenwriter Dirk Wittenborn: For a whodunit to work, you need more than one plausible suspect.)

Dunne apparently loathes subtlety. At the very welcome end, we see metaphorical tribal warriors stalking Ogden's posh estate. At this point, we wish they were real.

And cannibals.

"Fierce People" opens today at the Century Centre Cinema in Chicago. Rated R (language, drug use, violence, sexual situations, nudity). 107 minutes. .½

• In "King of California," Michael Douglas is beginning to really look and act like his legendary father, Kirk. Not "Spartacus" Kirk. Not "Doc Holliday" Kirk. Not even "Vincent van Gogh" Kirk. More like "Spur" Kirk, the rascally, one-legged, eccentric gold prospector in "The Man From Snowy River."

In the loopy and disjointed domestic drama "King of California," Douglas (Michael this time) plays Charlie, a rascally, eccentric nut job released from a psychiatric care unit. Away from home for many years, Charlie locates his now-grown daughter Miranda (Evan Rachael Wood), struggling to keep a job at McDonald's, pay bills and graduate from high school.

An incorrigible dreamer, Charlie figures out where a stash of ancient Spanish gold is buried: right under a new Costco building. He first presses Miranda to get a job there, then hatches a plot to secretly dig under Costco.

This drama perhaps reinforces the inbreeding rule of why directors shouldn't direct their own screenplays. First-time director/writer Mike Cahill puts his cast through their paces, but his scenes never come to a close, they just fade away. Douglas and Wood share a palpable tension as an estranged family unit, but they don't have much to work with, and Cahill doesn't seem to know what works anyway.

"King of California" opens today at the Century Centre Cinema in Chicago and the Evanston CineArts 6. Rated PG-13 (language, drug references). 93 minutes. ..

• Actor Justin Theroux's directorial debut "Dedication" inspires a mixture of admiration and disappointment. I didn't buy most of its strained, trying-too-hard-to-be-edgy plot, its unlikable, trying-too-hard-to-be-eccentric characters, or its unconvincing, trying-too-hard-to-be-upbeat ending.

The cast is sterling. Tom Wilkinson plays Rudy Holt, a wheezy, smoking, drinking old geezer who gets inspiration for illustrating children's books by going to strip shows. (Did Dr. Seuss ever do this?) When he expires, his writing partner Henry (Billy Crudup), a messed-up man who sleeps with heavy weights on his chest and head, spirals into an even greater depression than he already has.

Against Henry's will, his publisher (Bob Balaban) hires a new illustrator, a quirky young woman named Lucy (Mandy Moore, resembling a young Ally Sheedy in "The Breakfast Club"). Henry hates her. She needs a job, so she stays and deals with Henry's mood swings, weird pronouncements and offensive fashion sense. Can a reluctant romance be in the works?

If that happens, what does this mean for Lucy's mentor and lover, a college professor who has dedicated his latest book to Lucy? Or has he?

Crudup's tortured personality (literal as well as figurative) bravely dares us to hate him but makes sure we don't. Many of Moore's acting affectations from her earlier films have disappeared from Lucy, although a couple of old mannerisms pop up.

"Dedication" holds a fascination for its rabidly un-Hollywood characters. Even if the film's tone is harsh, it contains a few nice dialogue gems. Take Balaban's clever way to tell illustrators to leave: "Succeeding in this business is 99 percent perseverance and 1 percent talent," he says to prospective employees. "Congratulations, gentlemen, you're 99 percent of the way there!"

"Dedication" opens today at Piper's Alley, Chicago. Rated R (language, sexual situations). 111 minutes. ..

• The After Hours Film Society presents a restored print of Charles Burnett's 1977 classic "Killer of Sheep" at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Tivoli Theatre, 5021 Highland Ave., Downers Grove. $8 general admission, $4 members. Call (630) 534-4528 or go to www.afterhoursfilmsociety.com.