by MARK SLUTSKY

Mean Creek starts out as one film and ends as another, and the change is at once relieving and a little disappointing. As it opens, in the cruel, vaguely parentless world of disaffected small-town teenagers, it's got a bleak fatality reminiscent of Larry Clark (the plot description even makes it sound like Bully). By the end, though, it's become a much more conventional drama, and whether that genre's comforts are preferable to the more nihilistic path the film could've taken is up to you.

The film opens with a scene shot on amateur video: an overweight kid, George (Josh Peck), sets up his camera to shoot himself playing hoops outside his school. Another kid, Sam (Rory Culkin), moseys along and picks up the camera, and is almost immediately whaled on by Peck, who gives him a black eye. This is apparently not the first time Culkin has been the victim of his bullying, and later, chatting with his brother Rocky (Trevor Morgan), the two hatch a plan to humiliate the mean kid. Their plan is seized on eagerly by Morgan's buddy Martini (Scott Mechlowicz), a wilder, older kid with some obvious problems and a lot of aggression. They'll take Peck out on the river, telling him it's Culkin's birthday party, then force him to strip off his clothes and jump in the water, and laugh as he runs home naked.

Of course, things don't turn out so nice and easy. From the moment Peck gets in their car and hands Culkin an expensive watergun as a present, we realize he's not a baddie about to get his comeuppance; he just wants to be liked. And he has a learning disability on top of the overweight thing. It's heartbreaking, and the performances are overall quite good. Peck really stands out - he's the obnoxious, insecure, pathologically lying kid everyone knew in grade school.

Mean Creek is quite compelling up to about the two-thirds mark, when it starts to feel like it doesn't exactly know where to go next. Still, it's otherwise a very observant film, only rarely maudlin.

Mean Creek opens Friday, Sept. 17

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