My Boys Are Good Boys (1978)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good movie but grossly overrated

The acting in this movie is really good.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

As one of the previous reviewers confessed this film had all the earmarks of a tax write-off which it was for producer and star Ralph Meeker. Meeker got old Hollywood names Ida Lupino, Lloyd Nolan and Bosley from Charlie's Angels David Doyle to join him in this project.Meeker is an armored car guard and he has a son Sean Roche in a reform school. Roche and his buddies from a reform school execute a well thought out plan along with Roche's sister Kerry Lynn to rob Meeker's armored car on its rounds collecting coins. Unlike bills completely untraceable, that part was well thought out. So was the actual robbery. But the idea is to do it and get back before this juvenile penal institution does its head count as these places are wont to do.Lloyd Nolan as the security investigator for the armored car company is the only one who doesn't just go through the motions. The rest act like they are waiting for paychecks to clear from Ralph Meeker. The rest of the cast it's like we're seeing an amateur theater group.This was Ida Lupino's farewell acting job. Too bad she couldn't go out on something better.

I had never heard of it before watching this seventies crime movie. A crime flick that looks like a fifties or late forties film, speaking of juvenile delinquency. Not the seventies genre, for sure. The story is very surprising, where a bunch of very young hoodlums pull a daring and clever armored truck heist, behaving like professionals. Very surprising. I did not expect so much. And seeing old movie actors like Oda Lupino and Lloyd Nolan is pretty weird and funny too. Yes, a very good little film which grabs you, despite the fact that you have only a few spectacular and exciting elements. But don't misunderstand me, that's not a masterpiece, just a smart little grade B picture. Music score all along the film is pretty entertaining too.

This film is available on Mill Creek Entertainment's Action Classics 100 Movie Pack. After watching Trained to Kill: USA (the real reason I bought the box set) I switched to the next movie My Boys Are Good Boys, at first I assumed it was about rebellious youths and the whole movie would take place in the reformatory where they are held, but the story seemed to have more surprising twists and turns then an episode of 24. A somewhat easy escape leads to the youths robbing an armored truck. This is one of the best stories I have seen in a long time. What was also surprising was the performances. More notably David Doyle who played Harry Klinger the reformatory guard giving his my boys are good boys speech, Kerry Lynn as Priscilla, and the always hungry Chunky played by Robert Cokjlat. This film is a classic and a joy to discover.

When you think of movie versions of armored car robberies, you might envision this: Tough, ski-masked ex-cons packing automatic weapons, car chases, shootouts, helicopters, the mastermind. My Boys Are Good Boys has elements of this Hollywood stereotype--but it mostly deviates from it. (Don't look for blown-up buildings or police shootouts.) The film casts well-known actors Meeker and Lupino as parents of two of the teens who rob the car. All of the teen bandits in this movie are unknowns, but their acting is adequate. The teens plan the robbery from inside an LA County boys reformatory, with the outside assistance of a female teen, Priscilla, played by Kerry Lynne. Apparently Priscilla has a "bio" mom but lives with her divorced dad (Meeker) and his step wife (Lupino). This is important but I don't want to give away the ending.The writers have taken-up an unlikely idea: "Hey, let's have TEENS rob an armored car instead of grungy ex-cons! It hasn't been done before!" The writer's next hurdle was how to get a teen gang to do it. So they wrote the plot to include a group of incarcerated reformatory boys to pull the heist. Predictably, the group has some trouble trying to break-out of their complex, but once out are picked up by the stepsister of one of the boys (Priscilla) in an SUV. (This is at a time when they still called SUV's "cars.") A baffling attempted assault happens against Priscilla by a "Plain Clothes" or "Off-Duty" (?) cop just before the gang starts its run--this is resolved at the end of the movie. Sort-of. The "cop" seems to be in the movie because the producer said, "Hey, we gotta add more violence and tension to this movie to change the rating or make it hip!" The Criminal Mastermind (there is more than one mastermind) is Priscilla's stepbrother, Tommy. Tommy and his bandits and his stepsister commandeer the specially-targeted armored car, and eventually achieve their goal of a big heist. After some trouble, the boys break back into the reformatory to pretend they had never left.The adults in this movie play various parts such as investigators, parents, clerks, guards, cops. I feel that veteran actor Lloyd Nolan plays some of the best scenes in this movie. Especially good is his grilling of the gang at the reformatory--well-written and directed.I had remembered actor Nolan from various works but I did not know who the actors Lupino or Meeker were until after I viewed this movie. If you are under thirty you may not know anyone in this film.The movie includes the use of some implausible "Batman-like" fainting gas as a goofy device, but you just sort of ignore that because...you saw it on Batman! Also, the movie is too short. Fifteen or twenty-minutes more could have fleshed out the characters and plot and made the movie more enjoyable. Some of the music is effective for setting mood. The title song, MY BOYS ARE GOOD BOYS--is not that great, considering it is a theme. I think that I could have written a better one! Most of the musical score is sort of a electronic synthesizer/country music type. Cheap, no doubt--and it didn't age well. (It is a little better than the funk or disco seen in other 1970's movies, though. I rarely buy DVD's but I bought this movie with 49-other DVD's in a bargain set. I feel that there are only 5 or 7 good movies out of the set, this is one of them. But that's not saying much. Still, because I'm as much of a historian as a movie lover, I will watch the movie again. The work is good for a hoot when you want to relax with something short and familiar, and see what the suburban Los Angeles area was like in 1976 or 1977. (I think it was shot then but released later, not sure.) It is surprising to see what appears timeless after more than 25-years. And what in our culture has disappeared.