The Good Life

This uneven, but not uninteresting first feature starts alarmingly (in sub-Toto the Hero vein) with the 14-year-old protagonist, a would-be writer, recalling his life from pre-natal days - before picking up a little when he learns that his parents have died in a car crash, while he's planning to lose his cherry to a whore. Thereafter the film concerns the boy's efforts to overcome loneliness and guilt, to sort out his own problems and those of his relatives, and generally to get through growing up without too much pain. Weakest when most whimsical, the film is nevertheless sporadically perceptive about adolescent experience. Lively, amiable, and eminently forgettable.