Bedos, Richard, Fonda, Rich and Chaplin in All Together.

Jane Fonda’s first French-speaking film in 40 years finds her leading a joyous ensemble of septuagenarians in a sweet, thoughtful and spirited examination of how to grow old with dignity and pride in a regrettable era when senior citizens have been reduced to the status of a political agenda. At 74, Ms. Fonda is a testament to the benefits of exercise, the stimulation of cognitive effort, up-to-the-minute cosmetics, a healthy lifestyle—and the money to afford them all. She is glorious at any age, in any language, and is a class act on the screen who is always welcome. 

In All Together, sensitively directed by Stéphane Robelin from his own intelligent screenplay, five close friends for 40 years who begin to sense, feel and smell their own mortality decide to bypass the cruel third act that awaits them, circumventing the inevitable horrors of the retirement home by moving in together. Jeanne (Fonda), born in America but living in France for most of her life, looks young enough to be the others’ granddaughter, but she’s an academic dying of an unspecified terminal disease who keeps her condition secret and confides in no one. Her husband, Albert (Pierre Richard), is a celebrated photographer in the early stages of Alzheimer’s who is losing his touch, balance and memory. Their friends Annie and Jean (Geraldine Chaplin and Guy Bedos) fight constantly, their outbursts fueled by the futility and frustration of Jean’s eroding virility as a left-wing political activist. He still finds plenty of passionate causes to protest, but nobody pays much attention to the anger and drive of an old man; even the police refuse to arrest him for disturbing the peace. The odd man out in their group is Claude (Claude Rich), a randy bachelor who still clings to his dwindling reputation as a lady-killer. His libido is still active, but his heart not on par with his sex drive. Climbing the stairs to visit a prostitute, he suffers a stroke. Gathering around his bed in the hospital while his grown son demands that he move to a pensioners’ home, the friends make a life-altering decision to move into Annie and Jean’s spacious home. If anything worse happens, Jeanne rationalizes, “we could all help each other cope.” In France, the movie is called And If We All Lived Together, which is probably a better title. From the day they all transport their books, music, creature comforts and boxes of belongings to the new house, the trajectoryfollows them through the experiences of aging—both funny and touching—with affection and compassion. Clearly they need each other to keep going. And the thread that links them is Jeanne’s handsome dog walker Dirk (Daniel Bruhl, who played the German war hero in Quentin Tarantino’s unforgettable Inglourious Basterds), an ethnology student who is studying them, culturally and domestically, for a Ph.D. dissertation he’s writing on senior citizens. Nothing of portentous profundity happens to address the Big Issues—Annie turns the garden into a swimming pool for her grandchildren, Albert’s dementia grows, and Claude bribes Dirk to fill a prescription for Viagra—but the inevitably sad ending is leavened by a sense of community that continues even after death. The acting is solid, and the maturity of vision mixed with humor should appeal to the same audience that turned The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel into such an unexpected runaway hit. Jane Fonda may be the marquee value, but she does not act like a star. Admirably, she fits into the veteran ensemble like the seasoned pro she is, and in All Together, she’s only one of the many important and diverse pieces of a jigsaw devoted to Ruth Gordon’s premise that age is only something they stamp in your passport.

rreed@observer.com

ALL TOGETHER

Running Time 96 minutes

Written and Directed by Stéphane Robelin

Starring Guy Bedos, Daniel Brühl and Geraldine Chaplin

3/4

Mendez and Klena in Dogfight.

With so much mediocre junk currently polluting both stage and screen, it’s encouraging to visit the modest but robustly entertaining new musical Dogfight at Second Stage. Under the solid direction of Joe Mantello, and based on the honest, compelling, enthusiastically received 1991 movie of the same name directed by Nancy Savoca that starred River Phoenix and Lili Taylor, Dogfight is about love and loneliness, coming of age under pressure, and two young misfits struggling for identity despite the cruelty of rejection.

Four years after Vietnam, on a Trailways bus headed for San Francisco, a morose and apprehensive Marine named Eddie Birdlace shows the veteran soldier in the next seat the three bees tattooed on his forearm symbolizing his three inseparable best buddies whose names began with the letter “b”: Birdlace, Boland and Bernstein. A memory play begins, flooding the stage with flashbacks to 1963, a few weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, telling the story of four raucous, naïve boys on the verge of manhood during their last night before being shipped overseas. The title refers to a sadistic contest called a “dogfight” in which the recruits hit the streets seeking a date. In the game, the biggest dog wins $100 for bringing back the ugliest girl for the judges’ assessment and/or amusement. The guys are jerks and jarheads, cruising for “one last ride/on our last night stateside,” singing “Goodbye to chili fries, to apple pies and Dinah Shore ... So long to waffle cones, new Twilight Zones and Lesley Gore ...” Bernstein picks up a fat Indian from Albuquerque at the bus station and Boland secretly breaks the rules by hiring a toothless hooker to win the jackpot. But Birdlace is the one who ends up with a conscience. All swagger, guileless about what’s waiting on the other side of the globe, and pretending he’s not afraid, he scores big with a “dog” named Rose—a plain, sensitive, painfully shy virgin who writes poetry and waits tables in her mom’s diner. Rose is awkward, socially inept and a novice at romance, but falling for Birdlace’s pretense at being an all-American Eagle Scout out of Leave it to Beaver, she takes a chance and goes on the date, clueless about what she’s in for. Rose doesn’t win the dogfight game (there are uglier girls than she at the drunken party) but her humiliation and rage when she learns she’s been the butt of a heartless joke (“Isn’t it funny ... for a minute he convinced me I was pretty ... funny,” she sings tearfully in the privacy of her room) touches a chord in Birdlace that elicits the first apology of his life.

In Act II, Eddie and Rose reunite, and while his other buddies are off getting bee tattoos, he tries to make amends for his boorish behavior earlier in the evening by taking her to dinner in a fancy restaurant he can’t afford, then returns to her frilly room above the diner to listen to her records. Weaned on brainless bubble-gum rock, this crude and inexperienced boy from Buffalo is awakened to more substantial stuff like Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and even a song Rose composed herself, which she sings and plays on her guitar. Overwhelmed by the intimacy, they end up spending the night together with nothing in common but a growing compassion for each other. He’s ignorant and insecure, a volatile and basically unsympathetic person who drinks too much, curses obnoxiously and dreams of heroism in combat. She’s sensitive and confused about boys, self-conscious about her homeliness, and dreams of being another Joan Baez. It turns out she is not the only virgin in the room. After a night in Rose’s bed, fumbling for affection and refuge in each other’s arms, their lives change in ways neither can fully analyze. His swagger is gone—and the story turns tender.

Four years later, Birdlace returns, broken and disillusioned by war. His fellow recruits who thought it would only take a few months to teach the geeks a lesson and return to “The Hometown Hero’s Ticker Tape Parade” (“Cotton candy and lemonade/Can’t get that at the penny arcade”) are dead in the rice paddies and there is no homecoming. Nobody returns triumphant, no brass bands are waiting. Birdlace is the only survivor, and by the time his Trailways bus hits Frisco, he’s the one who needs some tea and sympathy. Rose has taken over her mother’s café, long since abandoning her ambition to be a folk singer. Both are still as vulnerable as they were the night of the dogfight; neither belongs anywhere. When they embrace, the looks on their faces tell a thousand epilogues, any one of which could melt the coldest heart.

Adapted by Peter Duchan from the earlier screenplay by ex-Marine Bob Comfort, and directed by Joe Mantello with simplicity and a refreshing lack of artifice, Dogfight works well as a musical. The pop music and cornball lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are underwhelming (“You—born on a cloud/Angel so far, angel so fine ... You—clear in a crowd/Answer my prayer, say you’ll be mine!”) but strangely, as the play takes shape, so does the score. The cast is uniformly terrific, especially Derek Klena as Birdlace, whose rough exterior and military buzz cut hide the fact that behind an unlikable slug an interesting human being wants to get out, and Lindsay Mendez, who sings beautifully and makes Rose a very special person trapped in a life of excess baggage. The show is really about seeing through the contradictions in people and watching them connect. Poignant, funny and totally endearing, Dogfight could turn out to be one of the surprise sleepers of the year.

rreed@observer.com

Freeman and Madsen in The Magic of Belle Isle.

The Magic of Belle Isle is a warm, human, feel-good experience about bringing out the best in people, one that brings out Morgan Freeman’s best performance in years. He plays a grizzled old drunk named Monte Wildhorn, a once-revered author of epic western novels suffering from writer’s block who has become so miserable and depressed since losing his wife to cancer that he has retired his career to the inside of a bottle of sour mash whiskey. Cynical, reclusive and partially dependant on a motorized wheelchair, he has come to a small lakeside community in upstate New York to escape from the pressures of responsibility, reality and people—by drinking himself into a stupor. Unfortunately, the summer house his nephew has found for him to hide away in comes equipped with a dependant dog named Ringo the owner left behind, an annoyingly friendly community of covered-dish suppers and a compassionate next-door neighbor named Charlotte O’Neil (Virginia Madsen), a single mom with three daughters. Against his best instincts, Monte develops a fondness for them all, especially the 9-year-old infatuated with science fiction who wants to be a writer. Reluctantly, he becomes her mentor, dispensing advice about style, imagination and inspiration (“Most of the time real life doesn’t measure up to what’s in your head”). The smallest and youngest girl loves elephants, so he gets his old typewriter out from under the mothballs and writes a story about a pachyderm named Tony, a story that eventually leads to a series. You already know what’s coming: it turns out that this is the summer when Monte decides to rejoin the human race. After an amalgam of shared experiences—measured gently with brush strokes of sweetness and learning-—at summer’s ends he has not only reactivated his mind and his career, but found his dormant heart as well.

Reunited with Rob Reiner, who directed him in The Bucket List, Mr. Freeman’s unwavering dignity, charm and intelligence are put to good use. Ms. Madsen is wasted, but her no-nonsense honesty is in evidence, too. I admire her unglazed presence and naturalism as well as her deglamorized Hollywood look. In every role, no matter how diverse, she always seems to come from another saner, nicer place than the movies. Mr. Reiner, who has often shown a fondness for earlier, less complex periods in America’s past, is the perfect director to bring out these qualities. The screenplay, which he wrote with Guy Thomas and Andrew Scheinman, sometimes seems hokey, sentimental and totally predictable, but in a film this affectionate these are welcome qualities. The kids text and talk on cell phones, but the whole movie seems to take place in another time—before the plague of reality TV, when people still knew how to take the time out of a busy day to  communicate through conversation and feelings. (Monte writes bestsellers and doesn’t even know how to use a computer.) The best thing about the film is the gentle way Mr. Reiner allows his characters to develop until their troubles become part of the human coil. You can quarrel with the smiley-face outcome of every ordeal, but the tenderness and optimism are so powerful and ingratiating that only a viewer with the darkest sensibility will go away untouched. When the waning days of summer signal fall’s impending arrival, you feel like these characters are old friends, and the magic of Belle Isle is self-evident.

rreed@observer.com

THE MAGIC OF BELLE ISLE

Running Time 109 minutes

Written by Guy Thomas, Rob Reiner and Andrew Scheinman

Directed by Rob Reiner

Starring Morgan Freeman, Virginia Madsen and Madeline Carroll

3/4

Wahlberg and Ted (voiced by MacFarlane) in Ted.

Wonders never cease. Who ever dreamed I could (or would, even on a dare) sit through a two-hour movie about Mark Wahlberg and a talking teddy bear? Or that I would (or could, even at gunpoint) possibly enjoy it so much? But here is Ted—a genre-screwing Donnybrook that defies description and guarantees, I swear, open-mouthed hilarity. It is refreshingly oblivious to the kind of political correctness that is going to be the death of us all. It is rude, raunchy and repellent to the point of almost being a send-up of the Farrelly Brothers, Judd Apatow, Adam Sandler and the rest of the ozone polluters giving movies a bad name. (Address your complaints to the nearest sewer.) It contains dialogue and depicts situations that cannot be described in a family newspaper—including the ones that are read only by the Addams family. It has nudity, profanity and X-rated detritus unsuitable for anyone with an I.Q. of 50. It is also creative, adorable, ingenious and devilishly, thigh-slappingly hilarious. Do not take my pulse. It must be the heat.

Boston, 1985. John Bennett, an unhappy 8-year-old boy and victim of school bullying, gets a teddy bear for Christmas. He kisses it, names it Ted, and vows to love it forever, making only one wish—that Ted could really talk. The next morning, when the neighborhood bullies are busy beating up the Jewish kids on Christmas Day, a miracle has turned Ted into a talking Pooh that becomes a national celebrity and a popular guest on Johnny Carson. Nobody can shut Ted up, including Seth MacFarlane, the multitasking hyphenate power player responsible for the outrageous animated TV sitcom Family Guy. He is the voice of Ted, and this is his feature-film debut as a director. I have never been a fan of the TV show, but among his other talents, Mr. MacFarlane has recently unveiled his secret passion for singing Broadway and movie show tunes and big-band jazz on a sensational new CD that has not left my player long enough to mix a fresh cosmo. His music is good, and there’s plenty of that, too. Whatever else you think of the movie, the soundtrack swings.

But I digress. Twenty-seven years pass, John grows up to be a 35-year-old Mark Wahlberg, and Ted grows up to be a potty-mouthed, pot-smoking, beer-guzzling, woman-chasing reprobate everybody would like to send back to any toy store that will take him. Ted does everything to break up John and his loyal, long-suffering girlfriend, Lori (Mila Kunis), but John is a grown man who still can’t sleep in a thunderstorm without his stuffed teddy bear. Lori doesn’t get a minute’s peace, even in bed. She even comes home from a lovely romantic anniversary dinner to find Ted entertaining four hookers, one of whom has done something on the living-room floor no maid will clean up. Forced to choose, John moves Ted into his own apartment, but the funny antics (contrived, I admit) are just beginning. A creepy guy with a humongous son who wants Ted for his own kinky nursery games stalks him in an ominous van. “Who was that?” asks John. “That was Sinead O’Connor,” says Ted. “She don’t look so good no more.”

The script bounces off the wall like a rubber Cassius Clay doll, while movie references abound. Ted talks like Little Caesar and takes bubble baths like cigar-smoking Edward G. Robinson. Jousting with sensitive subjects such as minorities and headline tragedies, flaunting convention in a determined effort to offend just about everybody, Ted (as the voice of Seth MacFarlane) mouths insults in the words of Seth MacFarlane (as the voice of Ted). In no time, you can’t tell one from the other. I ended up loving them both. The CGI Ted has digital features that morph into awesome expressions. He can look and act querulous, hurt, sensitive, impish or obnoxious, depending on the line. When the fat psychotic kid pulls his ear off, Ted yells “Back off, Susan Boyle!” But while you roar at Ted’s aside to the audience (“Someone had to go Joan Crawford on that kid!”) you can also feel the “Ouch!” Peace is restored when Lori saves Ted from his kidnappers, and Ted saves Lori from her oversexed boss, an A-hole who collects lurid artifacts like John Lennon’s glasses and Lance Armstrong’s testicles, “freeze-framed and bronzed.” There’s a guest appearance by an aging Sam Jones who played Flash Gordon, a Norah Jones concert where Mr. Wahlberg reverts to his old Marky Mark days and sings “The Love Theme From Octopussy,” and a vicious duck named James Franco. You had to be there.

In fact, most of Ted eludes description, analysis and explanation. You just have to hold onto your own certifiable sense of humor and let Mr. MacFarlane take you where he wants to go. Then get out of the way and enjoy it. Will it make you wince with embarrassment? That’s a promise. Will you also laugh? In double-time, like a Rockette. I don’t want to see a string of sequels about Ted, who has now worn out his welcome, like Bonzo. But one time around this summertime sandbox has left me cooled off, like a hydrant spray in a heat wave, and limp with laughter.

rreed@observer.com

TED

Running Time 106 minutes

Written by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild

Directed by Seth MacFarlane

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis and Seth MacFarlane

3/4

Knightley and Carell in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.

Don’t worry about floods, earthquakes or burning to death in an apocalyptic fire. When the end comes, protect yourself with love. This is the message conveyed in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, writer-director Lorene Scafaria’s feature film debut. It’s an intriguing take on the apocalypse as a pragmatic tone poem, with comedian Steve Carell in his first deeply dramatic role (at least, the first one I’ve seen). He is very touching and unexpectedly appealing, and with co-star Keira Knightley he exhibits a romantic chemistry of which I never thought him capable.

An asteroid named Matilda 70-miles wide is hurling toward planet Earth and is expected to collide in 21 days. Cell phones are useless. Water and power are cut off. People trying to escape the cities are trapped in endless gridlock. Life has lost all meaning, and the final flights on commercial airlines have just left the ground, signalling the demise of air travel forever. Mr. Carell plays Dodge, an insurance salesman, who watches the unfolding tragedy on the network news with a mixture of horror and resignation, while his wife simply leaps from the car and leaves him on the spot. He’s introverted and already bruised by life. Now he faces death alone. “This is the Titanic,” says his best friend, “and there’s not a life boat in sight.”

Enter Penny, a flaky downstairs neighbor in his apartment building he’s always carefully avoided—neurotic, extroverted, resistant to reality. Secretly, she’s been withholding Dodge’s mail and now she delivers a letter from his long-lost high-school sweetheart. Distraught and clueless as to where to turn next, the two strangers who have met accidentally join forces and hit the highway to find his old lover in New Jersey, then travel on to locate Penny’s family in Maryland. The movie chronicles their road trip and introduces the characters they meet along the way—a man they hitch a ride with who speeds up his suicide with the help of a hired assassin, the partygoers in a roadside diner where the staff serves an orgy to desperate, oversexed customers, a highway cop determined to uphold the law right up to the final blackout by writing up a speeding ticket. Penny locates an old boyfriend living in a fallout shelter with enough potato chips to last another six months. Dodge gets as far as a reunion with the estranged father he hasn’t seen in years (Martin Sheen). The movie shows how perspectives change—or remain the same—in the face of ultimate tragedy. There is room for tears, mixed with unexpected humor. As the final blackout approaches and the TV stations leave the airwaves with one final test pattern, the announcer reminds everyone watching to set their clocks ahead for Daylight Savings Time.

This is an unusual film, resistant to the usual end-of-mankind clichés. The script is full of surprises, even when the parts don’t always come together with the desired impact. The pace sometimes drags, and the focus wavers. Yet the film asks a lot of valid, disturbing questions to which Lorene Scafaria’s screenplay provides no easy answers. What would you do? Take up smoking again? Drink all the vodka in the liquor cabinet? Eat every fattening food the nutrition Nazis warn about? Have sex with anyone you want because “nobody is anybody’s anything anymore?” In the overlapping hours of their search, Dodge and Penny find a new definition of love that is irresistibly moving. If nothing else, see it for the two central performances. Keira Knightley finds a role without a trace of her usual glamour, while Steve Carell finally stretches his talents with more depth and quiet thoughtfulness than he’s ever been invited to previously display.

After so many hellish apocalypse movies, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is intelligent, dignified and emotionally satisfying. The message is simple. If the end is inevitable, then it’s better to face it with your arms around someone you love than alone and forlorn in an empty bed. The choices you make can lead to something oddly akin to optimism.

rreed@observer.com

SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

Running Time 101 minutes

Written and Directed by Lorene Scafaria

Starring Steve Carell, Keira Knightley and Melanie Lynskey

3/4

Sy and Cluzet in The Intouchables.

Already a huge hit in Europe, France’s crowd-pleasing The Intouchables seems destined to repeat its success here. Written and directed by Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, it’s the factual story of an unconventional relationship between a millionaire quadriplegic from the ritziest neighborhood in Paris and his Senegalese caregiver from the ghetto—a bond that begins as a working one but builds, through trust and care and shared experiences, into a lasting friendship that changes two unhappy lives forever. It has warmth, humor and an understated sweetness that is not to be taken for granted.

The daily manifestations of washing, changing, massaging, shaving, cleaning, spoon-feeding and lifting a paralyzed patient are so daunting that Philippe Pozzo di Borgo (played with heartbreaking patience and moment-to-moment honesty by the great French actor Francois Cluzet) is always interviewing new job applicants. Many over-qualified nurse-companions apply, but there is something intriguing, irritating and challenging about Driss (Omar Sy) that rouses Philippe’s curiosity. The man’s rebellious spirit, irreverent attitude and lack of pity are refreshing. And he more than lives up to his promise. Driss hates the job at first, refusing to change Philippe’s diapers, insulting his taste in music and generally marking time until he can go back on welfare. But the film derives its emotional impact from the surprising ways the two men overcome their differences and learn to help each other to a better level in life.

Driss is a homeless man with a criminal record for robbery and no focus or direction. He’s rude and arrogant, with his own blunt brand of pragmatism and logic. The first thing he does is steal a priceless Fabergé egg that belonged to Philippe’s beloved late wife. Philippe is a rich invalid with nothing to live for who is warned by his staff and his business advisors to be careful about granting a man of unsavory character access to his home and unlimited power over his deteriorating physical condition. Gradually, their horizons expand. So aghast at the price of a painting Philippe buys in an art gallery that he decides he can do it better himself, laughing hysterically at his first visit to the Paris Opera, acting as a makeshift therapist to Philippe’s neurotic teenage daughter, teaching his boss how to smoke a joint while making him listen to Earth, Wind and Fire, Driss exerts an influence that heals some of his boss’s emotional pain. Philippe, in turn, teaches his uneducated caregiver to appreciate Vivaldi and passes him off to the pretentious art world as an important new painter whose work is worthy of a pricey investment. Since Philippe was paralyzed from the neck down from a paragliding accident, you can’t help but feel the terror and the ultimate thrill of their bond when they share the risk of paragliding to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good.”

Eventually Driss learns compassion and responsibility while Philippe gains courage to take control of his own life and even seek romance. It’s all a bit too neatly resolved and, although it is a true story, some of the incidents are hard to swallow. For laughs, Driss stages an elaborate, life-threatening high-speed chase through the streets of Paris while Philippe fakes having an epileptic seizure to get a police escort to the hospital emergency entrance. Then when the cops leave, they drive away, pleased with their mischief. I had a rough time joining in the fun myself. Issues of class and racial tension pop up only in the underprivileged world Driss comes from. Philippe’s upper-class milieu seems to take everything in stride—suspicious at first because a black man from the streets given full reign in a mansion filled with treasures is a worrisome thing. But Driss wins over every white man in sight, especially when he shows off his hip-hop skills, and before it ends, he has total control of the house and everyone in it. A bit of a credulity stretch there, not to mention the fact that when Driss buys his first suit, Philippe’s secretary says he looks like Barack Obama. Sometimes the writing dispenses a condescension the filmmakers might not even be aware of. Still, the film has a life-affirming resistance to sloppy sentimentality that is bracing. And the acting is dynamic. For obvious reasons, Mr. Sy has all of the movement and action, and he’s a lively, colorful counterpart, but the wheelchair-bound Mr. Cluzet is the revelation. His expressions reveal myriad emotions from a motionless face that tell volumes about what he is thinking, feeling and sharing from within.

The Intouchables serves up a tasty abundance of charm, warmth and humanity that makes its popularity in Europe understandable. It’s the kind of feel-good movie that turns up as rarely as a winning lottery ticket.

rreed@observer.com

THE INTOUCHABLEs

Running Time 112 minutes

Written and Directed by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano

Starring François Cluzet, Omar Sy and Anne Le Ny

3/4

Wild Animals You Should Know at the Lucille Lortel Theare.

All through Wild Animals You Should Know, a morose little taste of darkness down at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Christopher Street, I kept wondering why so many people were laughing hysterically. The woman next to me kept saying, “What are they laughing at?” Good question. The play, written by Thomas Higgins and directed by Trip Cullman, is about a teenage jock who comes out of the closet in the creepy and clandestine world of homosexual Boy Scouts of America. It’s sad, unsettling and occasionally homoerotic, but it isn’t even remotely funny.

Matt and Jacob are best friends in junior high (although they are played by actors who look old enough to be college graduates). Matt (Jay Armstrong Johnson) is a strapping, chiseled soccer star and iron-pumping tease who does not appear to take life seriously on any level. Jacob (Gideon Glick) is a wimpy gay kid who openly admits he’s madly in love with Matt. “I’m not gay,” protests Matt while he’s stripping down to his Jockey shorts so Jacob can photograph him on his computer—“you just give good head.” While the boys pursue their naïve little game of cat and mouse, Matt’s tough, self-absorbed mother, Marsha (a wasted Alice Ripley), a realtor who is too busy showing houses to pay much attention to her troubled son, recruits Matt’s father, Walter (Patrick Breen), a grown nerd so averse to the great outdoors he even hates his own back yard, to chaperone the boys and their scout troop on a wilderness weekend. Jacob sees a night in a tent as the chance he’s been waiting for to get Matt alone in a sleeping bag, but Matt has a bigger goal: to confront, seduce and destroy another person just to see if he can. His victim is Rodney, the handsome, virile but sensitive head scoutmaster in his mid-30s who turns out to be gay but discreet about his private life, respecting and honoring both his position as a leader and his influence on the boys in his charge. While two of the fathers proceed to guzzle six-packs of beer until they throw up and pass out, the rejected Jacob pouts and the emboldened Matt stalks Scoutmaster Rodney (John Behlmann, memorable in The 39 Steps) and comes within inches of sexually conquering his prey. In the terrible aftermath of males behaving badly, hangovers, recriminations and bouts of marital discord ensue.

In a play that never convincingly sets forth a strong agenda, everyone pays a serious price, especially the scoutmaster, who resigns in shame after vandals spray graffiti on his garage doors, and even Matt’s father (“How do we teach these kids to be men, when we don’t have a clue what one is?”) But the main focus is on the sexually confused Matt, who feels so guilty he withdraws from the Scouts, stops eating, and opts for a life of frustration and longing. It is not confused where these people live, but in the first scene Matt sees Scoutmaster Rodney having sex with another man, and in the last scene his mentor stands in a window watching Matt, who finally has the courage to strip away his protective underwear and send a signal that he is finally ready for … what? This play is never clear about anything.

You can’t fault the actors, or the direction by Trip Cullman. But the play never lives up to its full potential. In light of the Penn State sex scandal, you could call Wild Animals You Should Know a topical report on pedophilia in an organization that pretends to protect children instead of abusing them, but these boys are too old and too mature to be anybody’s idea of innocent victims. We’ve all heard of predatory role models such as coaches, priests, orphanage administrators and camp counselors, raping and otherwise psychologically damaging youngsters in sleep-away camps. In this odd play, it’s the boy who aggressively sets out to ruin the life of an adult. Despite obvious shades of Rhoda Penmark in The Bad Seed and the evil, calculating child who wrecks the lives of her teachers in The Children’s Hour, the twist in Mr. Higgins’s play is that this time the child who does the dirty work pays the greatest price. The thing he destroys is the thing in himself he’s been hiding from everyone else. He feels so tortured that by pulling down his briefs as the lights go out, he longs to reveal himself completely, strip away every defense, and stand naked before his scoutmaster. Or is he just initiating another phase as adolescent jail bait? The audience is stunned, filing out solemnly with a little bit (but not a lot) to think about. It is not a comedy.

rreed@observer.com

Ed Koch, who once wrote a book about Rudy Giulani called Nasty Man, said that he and the former mayor are now buddies.

"I want you to understand that there is a philosophical difference between Giuliani and myself, but there is no enmity," Hizzoner said about Hizzoner. "We are friends."

Reminded about his book by the The Daily News' Adam Lisberg, Koch said "How many years ago was that?" Lisberg then asked Koch if Giuliani has changed. Responded Koch, "I doubt it. You never change your character. I mean, character is character."

He added, "What I've always said about Rudy was that he was an excellent, a superb mayor...I had my problems with him, which was his personality, the way he treated people."

As recently as three years ago, Koch sent out a massive email in which he urged people not to support Giuliani's presidential bid.

"In my opinion, it would be very harmful to our country if Rudy were to become president. Rudy simply does not tell the truth when it suits him not to," Koch wrote then. Now Koch says that he actually voted for Giuliani himself twice--in 1993 and 1997.

Koch came by City Hall to endorse Mike McMahon for Congress. Giuliani has endorsed McMahon's opponent Michael Grimm. But, as Koch noted, they are both backing Dan Donovan for attorney general. Giuliani also serves as a trustee on Koch's reform group, NY Uprising.

Bloomberg asked Warren if she would run crying to Obama if she wound up in a dispute with Geithner. Warren said that she, the President and the Treasury Secretary "see eye-to-eye on this consumer agency. And because of that, we are all trying to push in the same direction."

Sounds good enough, but there's also a fundamental problem. Warren and Geithner will at some stages be working toward divergent goals. Geithner's job is to protect the financial system and by extension the broader economy. Warren, meanwhile, is charged with keeping banks from ripping off consumers too badly -- a cause that could easily eat into banks' profit margins at a time when the system is still recovering from a shock. Sparks have flown before between Warren and Geithner. We'll see how effectively they work together now that they have to.

Apparently Geithner met with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein 38 times from January 2009 until March of this year. That means Blankfein beats out Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (35 meetings) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (a measly 25 meetings -- perhaps Geithner is not only a crony capitalist but also a sexist as well).

Geithner also met most frequently with Wall Street CEOs during his initial months in office. He met with them more than Fed chiefs or heads of Congress. Either it's time to break out the tinfoil hats, or it's time to remember that in January 2009, the financial system was in the throes of a historic bailout in the Troubled Asset Relief Program. After a litany of decontextualized data points culled from the document, The Huffington Post issues a caveat, courtesy Steven Adamske, Treasury's deputy assistant secretary for public affairs:

Adamske cautioned that the calendar isn't a full recording of Geithner's time atop Treasury, and that conclusions shouldn't be drawn merely based on Geithner's daily log.

On the other hand, there is a neat line graph, which is interactive. The segments light up and everything!