The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2009) - C+

Mystified by the contempt for this perfectly watchable adaptation. Familiar story -- a kid breaks free from his tyrannical gangster father during the Summer That Changed Everything -- is told with feeling; the key is that Art not only asserts his independence but sheds his paralyzing indifference (the first dinner conversation with dad and the subsequent encounter with Momo are key), which is a more engaging and less clichéd journey. I don't think the love triangle has the depth that Thurber would like (all the talk about "saving" Cleveland is idle, really, except in the immediate sense of saving him from thugs), and the action climax is stupid, but the movie is likably earnest and admirable in its refusal to blow things out of proportion (I'm not sure I've ever seen a mainstream film treat an ostensibly straight character's bisexual experimentation so matter-of-factly). And Peter Sarsgaard is typically awesome. Crumbles in the last 15 minutes, which are a tone-deaf trainwreck, but the whole is far better than the weirdly dire reviews suggest.