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80But if the film flirts with being sentimental, it never completely gives in: The inherent strength of the material as well as the integrity of the filmmakers gives this coming-of-age story restraint as well as warmth.
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70Forces a self-examination that is both traumantic and revealing.
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70Overall Sheridan keeps both "Oirishry" and sentimentality in check. He captures the book's evenhanded sense.
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70Shows an unusual degree of generosity toward all its characters, and its tenderness yields some affecting moments, even if they don't ring entirely true.
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70A likable rites-of-passage memory piece doused in period nostalgia, including the prominent use of vintage Movietone newsreels to mark the events of World War II.
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63An important and interesting story, but the reform school itself never seems terribly harsh.
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60While the movie tries to make the connection between the rough but sensitive lad we see on screen and the notorious carouser of later years, there's little here to suggest whatever torment led Behan to drunkenness and an absurdly early death at 41.
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58A quaint, romanticized rendering.
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58Though exploring, among other things, fallibility, homosexuality, injustice and loss, the picture seems afraid to really make any kind of strong statement, whether political or psychological.
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50My problem with Borstal Boy isn't so much with the facts as with the tone.
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50It's really a crock: a coming-of-age boys' prison film that has only a fanciful link with Behan's life. The film is a bastard grandchild of Tony Richardson's 1962 "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner."
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50The film moves briskly enough to be entertaining, but it can't escape the smothering hero worship that Sheridan infuses into every frame.
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50The film's intimations of bisexual romance have a certain innate drama that no amount of bad acting or cornball rugby matches can completely erase.
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50The result is a film that will probably please people already fascinated by Behan but leave everyone else yawning with admiration.
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50Given the serious subject matter, this adaptation of Irish writer Brendan Behan's autobiographical novel is surprisingly light and exceedingly good-natured.
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40As drama it feels forced and highly conventional.
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40For all its triteness, Sheridan's sentimentality has its poignancy: This adolescent boy is all set up to live out a halcyon life he'll never have.
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38Somewhere along the way, Borstal Boy became fatally compromised.
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30Mixes a rites-of-passage story with political and sexual elements to solid but finally uninvolving results.
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30The direction is so muted and sentimental and the pacing so soporific that only Ciarian Tanham's saturated color cinematography of the sylvan countryside breaks the monotony.
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10Sheridan seems terrified of the book's irreverent energy, and scotches most of its élan, humor, bile, and irony. What's left wouldn't have substantiated a memoir of any reputation, much less a movie.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 1 out of 2
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Mixed: 1 out of 2
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Negative: 0 out of 2
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TheCritic4While I'm a fan of the author.......I wouldn't have been such a fan if I saw this first. I'm afraid this movie is very very bland.