Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Manthast Absolutely amazing

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

jmn100 The charming "Pope Dreams" was one my favorites at last week's Atlanta Film Festival. I set aside my cynicism and my adult aversion to being emotionally manipulated by a plot-by-the-numbers script when I realized that this was going to be a straight-up coming-of-age movie. Besides, it's the wonderful acting that makes "Pope Dreams" stand out in a film festival setting, which tends to show more ironically wised-up characters. Although, with a title like "Pope Dreams", I figured this film would be ironic. Instead, this was a really generous-spirited adolescent movie about social class and love and family and music.I did find the title a bit off the beam,however, since,in this cut, anyway, the Papal pilgrimage subplot is quite incidental to the story. One of the film's best bits of dialog is a musically misunderstood reference to "Early Sabbath". I thought - "that's makes a great title!" - to myself as I was watching....

george.schmidt POPE DREAMS (2006) *** Phillip Aden, Marne Patterson, Stephen Tobolowsky, Julie Haggerty, David Shatraw, Noel Fisher, Naleah Dey. (Dir: P. Patrick Hogan)The teenager in love but facing life lessons has been around for decades and best embodied during the 1980s with John Hughes and John Cusack, director and actor who best caught the voice of a generation - hell, my generation - about the nice-funny-guy who never really got the girl who wants the girl but along the way grows up into the mature adult everyone can already see. Recently Zach Braff's out-of-nowhere comedy/drama "Garden State" became "The Graduate" for Generation X, Y & Z and now comes an indie dramedy with a cast of virtually unknowns but manages to be winning, funny and surprisingly poignantly moving.Newcomer Phillip Aden stars as the Cascadian character Andy Venable, a decent kid who loves music and is the drummer of his band who are quite frankly beneath his talents. When he's not busy working with his father Carl (veteran character actor Stephen Tobolowsky, best known as Needlenose Ned of "Groundhog Day" and Sammy Jankis, the template for Guy Pearce's anti-hero in "Memento") at his audio/video retail outlet, he is dreaming of something better from his blah-sville existence in sun-dappled LA. Just when he can't figure out his life enters a beautiful blonde named Brady Rossman (hottie Marne Patterson), a Stanford sophomore whose boyfriend in San Diego but attempting to see her for a trip to Key West much to the chagrin of her father, Joel (David Shatraw), a musical composer, who denies her wishes. Determined to get her way and with the aid of her best friend, Juanita (Naleah Dey) the two girls hatch a plan: have Brady find some loser to date to infuriate her father just for spite and then dump him when he caves in for the vacation getaway.The girls find their patsy in the unknowing form of Andy when they see his band perform at the local bar and after she introduces herself and asks him out, Andy is smitten. Andy's got other problems too. His beloved mother, Kristina (Julie Hagerty, giving a career high performance) has a rare form of cancer and a short-time longevity that Andy cannot deal with despite the insistence by his father and his sisters to help them help her in her hour of need. It is too much for Andy who is also attempting to raise money so he can take Kristina to the Vatican for a personal visit arrangement to meet The Pope. Written and directed by P. Patrick Hogan (who makes a fine directorial debut here), a veteran sound editor, has a good eye and ear for dialogue in his witty, touching and earnestly adult screenplay capturing the voice of adolescent angst and the mature subject matter of death with an able hand. I can't recall a film that has accurately depicted the suffering of cancer victims with such delicacy and decency largely thanks to the impressive acting by Hagerty in her smallish yet important role. All around the acting is on par with the production in itself. Vaden - who resembles a cross between Cusack, Matthew Broderick and Bud Cort in his "Harold and Maude" hey-day - is remarkable and adept with the sly comedy and sudden drama as well as Patterson who makes her Brady a likable babe who clearly has feelings for Andy and cannot understand how her initial plan has instead given her a new relationship with the decent-hearted would-be beau; she shines in several scenes where you can see her character despising her initial plotting. Also noteworthy is Noel Fisher's soccer-obsessed Pete "Pelando" Frazier, the goofy best bud of Andy who also is surprising in a few scenes of drama where he isn't who he appears to be. Fisher recalls the younger Anthony Michael Hall with a touch of David Spade's curdled wit.I was pleasantly surprised with this film and enjoyed it thoroughly and it was nice to see veterans like Tobolowsky (in arguably his best work ever) and Haggerty (ditto) make it effortless with newbies Vaden and Patterson.

Henry (HenryTheHank) was lucky enough to see this film at the Newport Beach Film Festival, and I have to say that it was one of the best films I saw there this year. A good 'coming-of-age' film is hard to write, I think, because the conventions of storytelling lend themselves to practices which aren't reflected in our own life experiences. For example, it's tempting as a writer to tell a story where everything works out okay in the end, where all the loose ends are tied up in the places we would expect, or want, them to be. I think one of the things I liked the most about this movie was the fact that it didn't try to reconcile the irreconcilable, instead it gave us characters and situations we could actually care about because they reflect, at least a little, some part of ourselves. The resolutions in this film run the gamut from heartbreaking to happy, but none of them felt contrived or insincere.I'm a very tough critic of films, especially independent ones, because I've seen so many. I've been to too many film festivals, and more often than not I find myself distracted by the technical shortcomings of low-to-no-budget film-making. I'll be frank and say that this film was not technically flawless –in retrospect there were a few things that I felt took away from the film. Having said that, the aspects of the movie that were good were good enough to make me look past the film's shortcomings. It got the right things right: characters I liked and believed, a story that was satisfying, and an underlying message that didn't feel trite.If I could change anything about the movie, I would change the title. Based on the title "Pope Dreams" alone I would (and did!) make any number of assumptions about the film that aren't true. The title doesn't reflect the seriousness or gravity of the film, and it doesn't do justice to the comedy or humor either. This movie is better than its title suggests. The themes of the movie are powerful, and the title should reflect them. Ultimately the title of the film doesn't really make it better or worse, but it does do a great deal in terms of making the movie more accessible and marketable. I wouldn't be making a suggestion like this unless I really felt it would help bring more people to the audience, because I'd love to see more people check this movie out.Congratulations to the filmmakers, you've done a wonderful job and I was thoroughly entertained. A focus on story and character is what independent film-making is all about – I'm glad to see that someone remembered that.

dana-1152 Hogan crafts a sweet, yet also appropriately sad, tale of late teen desire. The principal actors work well together, with believable dialogue and tenable situations. The characters could have been stereotyped and overemotional, but Hogan and the ensemble infused them with enough sensitivity and humor to allow the pathos to appear naturally.All five of the main characters were firmly defined, and the actors performed with distinction, especially Vaden (Andy) and Patterson (Brady) They made their characters believable. A couple of the side characters were a bit cartoonish (the lyricist partner and Brady's boyfriend come to mind) but for the most part they supplemented the storyline without calling attention to themselves. On the plus side, the characters of the bar owner and Brady's girlfriend were very enjoyable and even stole their scenes.This film is recommended. It will probably get a PG-13 for language, but the salty dialogue did not seem superfluous for either the characters or the storyline. I'm not sure precisely who the intended audience will be - much of the humor seems aimed at 30 to 50 year olds looking back at being teenagers, rather than current teens - but it seems reasonable that it will appeal across a broad spectrum. A solid first effort for both director/ writer Hogan and producer Loh.