Bad Manners Reviews

Sort of a modern-day version of Oliver Twist, BAD MANNERS was an independently made movie that might have made noise at the box office had more attention been paid to detail and less to overplaying. Several orphans are incarcerated in a Catholic home (the Bleeding Heart Orphanage), which ranks behind Devil's Island but just ahead of Stalag 17 in toughness. But these are not sweet-faced moppets; they are scruffy punks, minigangsters. Black and Mull think a new adopted child might go well with their decor in Santa Barbara. They take Hentz home with them, but the three are hardly a good match. Hentz hates his new life, and his pals at the orphanage decide to get him back. The film takes lots of whacks at "The Establishment," and the shame of it is that in the right hands this might have been a good film.