Troubled Woman Finds Refuge and Romance at ‘Boys’ School

Winona Ryder, perpetual ingenue and demi-icon of acting potential, has attained that certain status wherein her initial appearance in a film is afforded the Joan Crawford-esque presentation, a kind of visual fanfare: A door opens . . . and she’s there. The camera freezes, just long enough for us to drink her all in.

This is glamour, babe, never mind that in “Boys”--Stacy Cochran’s not only disappointing but numbing new comedy--there’s a cop (John C. Reilly) on the other side of the door asking where she’s been, with whom, what they did and wondering whether she’s stoned. As Patty Vare, local “wild girl” and general reprobate, Ryder, who seems to get more beautiful with every picture, looks good even when she’s supposed to have a hangover.

Such are the perquisites of stardom, although when Patty gets thrown off her horse, rescued by a kid named Baker (Lukas Haas) and stashed in his dorm room at a local boarding school, another student refers to her as “some lady.” Ouch.

Anyway, there are two basic threads--and we mean threads--holding “Boys” loosely together: the idea of a semiconscious and mysterious “older woman” being harbored in a boys school, and the boy himself. Why doesn’t Baker simply take her to the hospital? One, because he thinks she’s on the lam (which is sort of true). But also because Baker, who is “creative” enough to hand in Stephen King-style decapitation stories when his writing teacher asks for John Cheever, is also creative enough to keep a semiconscious woman in his dorm room for whatever creative purposes come to mind.

But Baker (all the students go by last names, and all are named John) also has to be kind and gentle and sufficiently sweet to kindle something in Patty. And Haas (“Witness,” “Rambling Rose”) wouldn’t want to be saddled with some sort of career-killing “Harold and Maude”-like role at this stage of his promising professional life. And so, none of it makes much sense at all.

There are moments that make you wonder, though. When Murphy (Spencer Vrooman), the most irritating of the irritating younger students, berates Baker for stashing Patty, he repeats some sage advice his dear old mother once gave him: “If you give a kitten too much milk, you’re gonna have a permanent cat on your hands.” Disregard for a moment the precocious misogyny of such a remark, and consider this: It’s exactly the kind of pompous and not-quite-pertinent comment a self-important, 12-year-old hormone case in a cloistered boys’ convent might make. And if anything else in the movie showed the same kind of precise thinking and insight, you’d have to believe Cochran is a genius. But nothing else does, and you don’t.

So you’re left wondering, what in God’s name is going on? The director, whose first feature was the well-regarded “My New Gun” with Diane Lane, has misfired all of her cannons here. We can’t for a moment buy the love affair between Baker and Patty--unless she’s an inveterate nymphomaniac, which may in fact be the case--and since the script’s moony lyrics need a romantic melody to wash them down, you choke.

The two flee the school, Baker decides to drop out, Patty disappears, he drops back in, the mystery that has been torturously alluded to via Patty’s flashbacks is resolved--it involves a ballplayer named Bud Valentine (Skeet Ulrich) whose name, appropriately enough, suggests beer and roses--and the conclusion is as unbelievable as anything else that happens. So give them a cheer for consistency. “Boys” won’t hurt anyone’s career but Cochran’s, but it won’t do you any good either.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for language, some sexuality and drug content. Times guidelines: Language gets rough, and the May-June love affair involves sex.

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‘Boys’

Winona Ryder: Patty Vare

Lukas Haas: Baker

Skeet Ulrich: Bud Valentine

John C. Reilly: Officer Curry

Wiley Wiggins: John Phillips

An Interscope Communications/PolyGram Filmed Entertainment production, released by Touchstone. Director Stacy Cochran. Producers Peter Frankfurt, Paul Feldsher, Erica Huggins. Screenplay by Cochran. Cinematographer Robert Elswit. Editor Camilla Toniolo. Costumes Lucy W. Corrigan. Music Stewart Copeland. Production design Dan Bishop. Art director Gary Kosko. Set Designer Dianna Freas. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.