Raising Victor Vargas

Raising Victor Vargas (2002, Peter Sollett)
By turns charming and touching in a lightly humanist way, "Raising Victor Vargas" gently follows an arc of the title character and a budding love interest. One might say the entire film is "budding"; there are similarities to Martin Scorsese, if not exactly in content or approach, but the poor-if-not-squalid household and ne'er-do-well youngsters brings to mind a PG-13 "Mean Streets" while the casting of Victor's grandmother character, who enjoys listening to one of her grandsons play the piano but does not enjoy catching him popping one off in the bathroom, reminded me a lot of the same kind of entertaining, easily-upsetting mother character in "Goodfellas." I wouldn't say that the honest reality of this film would compare to the same in, say, Ken Loach's "Sweet Sixteen" -- I must say I find it odd that the fighting in the household centers around teenagers learning about sex, and not about things like lack of money or weather too warm for the boys to ever wear shirts. You won't learn anything about life from watching it, but it's pleasant enough to observe for a while.