‘JOE the King” starts off badly, with Camryn Manheim going over the top as a vicious school teacher in an unbelievable school-room scene.
But it eventually grows into a poignant, graceful little film about a teenager growing up poor and lonely in a small town in upstate New York.
It’s a bleak story. But actor turned writer/director Frank Whaley, who is supposed to have drawn upon his own youth, tells Joe’s tale in an admirably unsentimental, low-key way.
As a result, unlike so many films that deal with unhappy poverty-stricken childhoods in dysfunctional families, this one is never so depressing that you just don’t want to know what happens next.
Joe (played at first by Peter Tambakis, and then, for the bulk of the film, by Noah Fleiss) is the second son of Bob (Val Kilmer with a big beer gut), a some-time school janitor and full-time no-goodnik.
Bob is also a drunk and a deadbeat, and Joe cannot go to school or the restaurant where he washes dishes without an adult reminding him of his father’s debts. And when Bob gets angry, he’s capable of beating Joe’s mother Theresa (Karen Young).
Skinny, badly dressed and always hungry, Joe is perpetually late for school. He’s also foul-mouthed and a petty thief, though not a bad kid under it all.
In his inarticulate way, he loves both his parents and his older brother. When he steals, it’s to help pay off his father’s creditors and to replace his mother’s record collection (destroyed by Bob in one of his drunken rages).
Eventually, though, Joe’s thieving gets him into real trouble.
Fleiss does a fine job of making Joe a sympathetic character, so that you hope things will turn out well for him, even though you know they probably won’t. Kilmer, Young and Ethan Hawke as a kindly teacher are all good.
Apart from the odd, hard-to-believe line, Whaley’s script is strong and fat-free. His direction gets more assured as the film goes on, and there are some powerful, deftly drawn scenes.
One odd thing is that Whaley depicts the 1970s as the time before shampoo: all the characters sport lank, greasy hair, all the time.
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JOE THE KING
Starring Noah Fleiss, Karen Young, Val Kilmer and Ethan Hawke. Written and directed by Frank Whaley. Rating: R. Running time: 93 minutes. At the Union Square, Broadway and 13th Street.