Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Kids are mean. How’s that for a generalization? But for most of us, we know it to be true. Nearly everyone, at some point in their childhoods, was on either the giving or receiving end of some sort of cruelty. Call it a right of passage, a function of raging hormones or just a sign of underdeveloped subtlety (after all, adults are often just as bad, they’re just sneakier about it), but it’s a difficult stage of life. Jacob Aaron Estes 2004 film, Mean Creek, vividly illustrates just how difficult.

Sam (Rory Culkin) is a middle school aged kid. He’s rather small, a little mopey and manages to get himself beat up by school bully George (Josh Peck). George is a much bigger kid, having been held back several times. He’s no “popular kid” he’s not that kind of bully. He doesn’t use peer pressure or sneering humiliation to oppress the other kids, he uses his fists, plain and simple. His cruelty lacks any sort of manipulation, it’s just there – and the other kids hate and fear him in equal measure.

Sam has an older brother, Rocky (Trevor Morgan), who is protective of the younger, smaller Sam. When he finds out about the beating, he and his friends decide it’s time someone takes George to task for his bad behavior. They’re familiar with this kid; he’s been bullying for years and has been held back enough times for some of them to have intimate knowledge of his tactics. Thus a plan is hatched to deal with George and exact a little retribution not only for Sam but for the others as well. Too bad things often don’t go as they’re planned.

Mean Creek is an excellent film. It isn’t excellent because of the premise – that’s been done a thousand times in a thousand ways. It isn’t excellent because of the characters; they’re pretty much stock teenagers that can be found in most movies about teenagers. You know, the fat kid, the small kid, the sensible kid, the manipulative older kid with a bad home life. But for all the times the story has been told and all the times we’ve seen these character types, these kids feel real. They’re dumb, cocky, naïve, sweet, angry, scared, doubtful, considerate, strong, hateful – sometimes all at the same time. Not one of these characters is a cardboard cut-out. They may fit a general stereotypical description, but each has another side, sometimes several. Sam, as the main character, or at least the character around which the story initially revolves, is probably the best example. He’s a slight kid, angry at being beat up and embarrassed. He looks up to his brother and goes along with the plan hatched by him and his friends, despite misgivings. But he’s not a doormat. He will sometimes stand up for what he thinks is right. He isn’t consistent, one minute he’s the stubborn and pragmatic realist, the next he’s just another kid following the leader. He’s a kid. He isn’t fully formed, hasn’t become yet the person he will ultimately decide to be – he’s making the same kinds of mistakes and having the same lapses in judgment that every single kid has at some point. He’s a young, complicated person – exactly how young (and not so young) people tend to be.

The characters are also not exaggerated in their general roles. The fat kid isn’t morbidly obese, the sensitive kid doesn’t cry at the drop of a hat. Again, this makes them feel more like actual kids. The film itself is similar in premise to Bully, yet there isn’t the pervasive sense of overdoing the stupidity that leads to a bad outcome, or the evil behind the face of the bully, or even the complete lack of interest of the parents. Those aspects are present, simply tempered by a smidge of realism. Sure, we don’t end up with characters that we can hate or love or write off as total idiots, so the movie isn’t as simple to digest, but it is a far more realistic portrait of actual kids. That’s saying something indeed when Bully is based on factual events and Mean Creek is not. I do in fact like Bully, but I like Mean Creek a whole lot more. It’s a matter of a difference in directorial style – in Bully Larry Clark plays up the ugly, hateful characteristics of the kids and the situation without supplying any mitigating complexity and in Mean Creek Estes plays up that very complexity and gives us, as a result, kids who feel like kids we could know and understand rather than tabloid fodder designed to shock.

The performances are uniformly good, with standouts coming from Rory Culkin, Scott Mechlowitz as a friend of the older brother and Josh Peck as George. Culkin handles the complexity of Sam very well. This isn’t an easy character; he isn’t the all-heroic protagonist. Culkin does a great job with the range of conflicting emotion required. Mechlowitz is the ring leader of the older kids, the one with the crappy home life. He’s handsome and charming and dangerous, but he’s also damaged and vulnerable. He masks his fear with manipulation, aggression and posturing, beautifully playing this messed up kid. Peck may be the finest of them all. We hate his George, we don’t hate his George, we hate his George again. This kid has us all over the place with this character – we understand the reactions of the other kids to his words and actions.

Even though this is a gritty, almost ugly drama, the cinematography (Sharone Meir) is fabulously lush and pretty. The river the kids end up on is lovely, a nice backdrop to the decidedly un-lovely goings-on in their saggy, aged rowboat. We also see glimpses of the kids at home - middle class, regular kids with a big nasty mess on their plates that they didn’t anticipate. The town looks like Anywhere, USA – no unnecessary exaggeration on the visual level, either.

Mean Creek is not a cheery movie. If you’re looking for something to lift your spirits, definitely look elsewhere. It is, however, a movie that vividly details how hasty decisions and ill-conceived plans can and do get set in motion – with unexpected and unwanted consequences. Kids are mean, I know it from my childhood and as a parent - they’re mean and complicated and messy. Mean Creek never talks down to us or makes its characters into caricatures. The script never lets us forget to care about these kids – all of them – or fall into the notion that they’re somehow different from any other kids out there trying to find their way. It’s frightening and humbling and something especially important for parents to remember as their kids move out into the mean world of adolescence.


Recommended: Yes