MOVIE REVIEWS: UNHOLY INNOCENTS ABROAD IN THE WORLD : ‘Heaven Help Us’: Catholic Boys at School and Play

Did it really happen? Somewhere, sometime, in some vanished parochial school, did a nun inform the little girls in her class that they shouldn’t wear patent leather shoes--because the white-reflected flash of panties would madden their little boy classmates, would fill them with unholy desires?

Perhaps not. But that apocryphal, repressed world is the one writer Charles Purpura re-creates in “Heaven Help Us” (citywide). It’s an unambitious, derivative but engaging little comedy about five young misfits in a Brooklyn Catholic boys’ school in the early ‘60s, their fumbling attempts to escape virginity and how they bring the petty tyranny of their special nemesis, sadistic Brother Constance, crashing down.

The parameters of Purpura’s script have been set by such movies as “American Graffiti,” “Animal House” and even “Diner.” This is a male-bonding comedy, a teen-age sex comedy. It’s an us-against-them movie, with old rock songs on the sound track, slapstick sex scenes and a bang-up climax, complete with coda.

It’s hardly original. It’s hardly deep. But, in contrast with much of its genre (“Porky’s” and its progeny), it’s a model of sophistication, decorum and even taste. It has crass moments and cheap shots, but it’s still good: cleverly thought out and gracefully filmed by first-time film director Michael Dinner, who directed the PBS “Miss Lonelyhearts.”

“Heaven Help Us” is well acted by a high-spirited cast--Andrew McCarthy (“Class”), Malcolm Danare (“The Lords of Discipline”), Kevin Dillon, Stephen Geoffreys and Patrick Dempsey as the misfits; Mary Stuart Masterson as the love interest (feisty counter girl at the local soda shop), and Donald Sutherland, John Heard, Kate Reid and Wallace Shawn (in a brilliant, ferocious bit) among the adult bystanders.

As the perfidious Brother Constance, whose teaching technique is all rod and no coddling, Jay Patterson creates as believable and memorable a heavy as his cotton-gin Klansman in “Places in the Heart.”

It’s a wish-fulfillment movie--and never more glaringly--or damagingly--so than in the circumstances of Constance’s comeuppance. The characters are all types, but they’re amusing types--Dillon (Matt’s younger brother) as the homophobic bully and stud, Danare as the obese intellectual, Geoffreys as the perpetual masturbator, McCarthy as the author-surrogate. There are little notes of poignancy, human frailty or sheer anger against injustice to balance out the slapstick.

You don’t want to overpraise “Heaven Help Us” just because of its competition’s shabbiness. On balance, though, none of its sins are venal. Only one miscreant deserves severe punishment. Whoever demanded the change of Purpura’s excellent original title, “Catholic Boys,” to “Heaven Help Us” (which suggests a failing TV sitcom about happy-go-lucky priests and rollicking nuns) deserves to stand in the corner and say extreme penitence.

‘HEAVEN HELP US’

A Tri-Star release of a presentation by HBO Pictures in association with Silver Screen Partners. Producers Dan Wigutow, Mark Carliner. Director Michael Dinner. Script Charles Purpura. Camera Miroslav Ondricek. Editor Stephen A. Rotter. Score James Horner. With Donald Sutherland, John Heard, Andrew McCarthy, Mary Stuart Masterson, Kevin Dillon, Malcolm Danare, Kate Reid, Wallace Shawn, Jay Patterson, Jennie Dundas, Philip Bosco, Patrick Dempsey, Stephen Geoffreys.

Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (persons under 17 must be accompanied by parent or adult guardian.)