This Boy's Life (2003, DVD)

I amazed when I hear people say: "Parents weren't as abusive back in the 1950's" or "Kids back in the 1950's weren't as much as punks as the ones today". Unfortunately, the 'good days' were not always as good as we might think. Human behavior is human behavior, plain and simple.

This movie is from a book (an autobigraphy) called "This Boy's Life" by a professor somewhere in New York, by the name of Tobais Wolfe. It is inspirational story showing that one has to be absolutely mad as hell to get out of the rut they are in. I believe this point was clearly made.

The movie starts with Ellen Barkin as Caroline and her teenage son Leonardo Dicaprio as Toby. She is heading off to Washington to be Uraniam, which she believes will make her rich. But, she goes back to her old habits: job to job, and falling for another abusive man. Jack promises to be a good kid...

He gets his hair greased in the typical punk style of the 1950's. These kids do such immature and dangerous things that OUTRAGED ME! For example, this man pulls his car up to the curb..leaving it unlocked. It is parked on a hill, and Dicaprio takes the emergency break off with his punk friends and it rolls out of control down a hill. That could have killed someone.

Jack once again proves that he can't behave and his mother sends him to leave with ANOTHER man named Dwight from Concrete Washington. Jack is a hard working man, steady paycheck, and "certainly" not like all the other men that Caroline loved. But, young Jack finds that Dwight is not the nice, nerdy man whom had coffee at their house...he is a sociopath when one gets to really know him.

He of course treats Caroline right, until they get to know each other more. He becomes more abusive to both Jack and Ellen's lives. This S.O.B takes the money that Jack has earned from his after school jobs to buy liquior, when he promised he was going to leave that in his savings account for Jack("for when he ""really"" needed it) This really eerked me!

Dwight is one of those dream crushers, which is why I find him so worthless. He never had the guts or effort to make something of himself in life, so he defeats Jack and Caroline, but he is fortunately NOT successful at that! Jack got accepted into a prep school, but De Niro threw the letters away. Dwight says "Hotshot! He's got no chance getting into some fancy prep school.' Also I thought he was even more cynical to Caroline when she gets a job in the campaign office saying, "I know what you want from JFK...and sure isn't hope!"(This was set in 1960)

At the end, Jack and DeNiro almost LITERALLY kill eachother fighting. Finally Caroline and Jack hit the road to accomplish the dreams they set out for. At this point when Dwight screams and cries to them "What about me! Why doesn't Dwight get some consideration!"-he is a jealous, selfish man which he covered up with his real macho and abusive attitude towards others. (I think we all know someone like this-unfortunately) It was a movie moment in how Dwight really showed his true colors...what was beneath his mean, hateful attitude all his life.