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Created Mar 22, 2009 03:16PM PST • Edited Mar 22, 2009 03:16PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   The ability to evoke a profound emotional response is a cinematic ability too often overlooked in a day and age when superficial summer blockbusters get overrated to the nth degree. “Mean Creek,” the superb breakout film of Jacob Aaron Estes, is an independent gem whose ability to tug at the heartstrings comes not from banal melodrama but tragic circumstances surrounding an ill-considered revenge plot by teenage Sam (Rory Culkin) and company against taunting school bully George (Josh Peck). Writer-director takes a deceptively simple story and gives it the sort of treatment one would ordinarily expect to find from an assured filmmaking veteran, not a little-known director with no previous track history to suggest the greatness that “Mean Creek” ultimately achieves. Its a film of intense regret, bad decisions, layered characters and steadily growing tragedy that shocks and awes.

4. Acting

   Perfect 5.0

   The acting is uniformly superb, an especially impressive feat when one considers the youthfulness of the cast. All the main characters are teenagers being played by teenagers, each one turning in a performance-cum-individual fluorish that deserves recognition. Rory Culkin (previously of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs”) is sympathetic and naive as Sam, a bullied kid whose desire to get back at George in a non-lethal way eventually leads to some deep soul-searching, and Culkin sells his every emotion splendidly. As his girlfriend Millie, who becomes involved in the revenge plot (to make George strip down, jump in a lake and run home) despite her initial skepticism, Carly Schroeder is equally affecting.

   As the older members of the central teen cast, Trevor Morgan, Ryan Kelley and Scott Mechlowicz are further commendable. The true surprise package here, though, is Josh Peck, notoriously one-note as one half of Nickelodeon’s “Drake and Josh.” Here, he turns George into a bully with more going on underneath his tough, protective surface than he’d like those around him to believe, and his emotional confusion is never better conveyed than in a scene viewed at the close of the film in which Peck’s George bares his soul for the video camera.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

8. Male Costars Perfect 5.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The low-budget shows but is ultimately overwhelmed by the excellence of everything else going into the production. The screenplay avoids becoming convoluted and correctly concludes with an open ending, while Estes directs with a competence and flair that betrays his inexperience.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

    The “F” word is used about a hundred times by the teenaged characters (probably more, really) and violence only really creeps into proceedings sporadically (once at the beginning and then later in the movie) but is kept to a visual minimum, while sex is more a subject of discussion amongst the teen characters than it is a clearly present aspect of the film.

17. Sex Innocent 1.1

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Profane 3.0

21. Reality

    Natural 1.0

    Everything here feels authentic. The teenage characters, for better of for worse, act like normal teenagers might. The actions taken by them end in results that – if not literally than symbolically – evoke the regret and shame of real-life mistakes. Even the seeming presence of the stereotypical bully turns out to have more genuine substance to it than we might have anticipated. One of “Mean Creek’”s greatest strengths is how natural the proceedings feel.

22. Circumstantial Natural 1.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0