Just Looking (1999)

The year is 1955, and 13-year-old Lenny Levine (Ryan Merriman) has made it his mission to see two people engaged in an "act of love." His first choice--Roy Rogers and Dale Evans--being unavailable, he tries to spy on his mother (Patti LuPone) and his new stepfather. But no sooner does his stepfather figure out what's going on than Lenny gets shipped off to Queens to spend the summer with his Aunt Norma and her Italian husband, Phil (Peter Onorati). Lenny's hormones kick into high gear when he starts discussing S-E-X with the neighborhood kids and meets a former brassiere model named Hedy (Gretchen Mol). What follows is a coming-of-age story in which Lenny learns about the reality of becoming an adult. First-time director Jason Alexander trusts his material--he lets Lenny be a mensch, and draws the other characters as three-dimensional humans (eschewing the golly-gee stereotypes that usually populate 50's period pieces). The kids are perhaps a bit more sophisticated than they might really have been, but the sometimes anachronistic attitudes ward off sentimentality, and help to make this small film a surprisingly relevant one.

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