The Wood

An across-the-board delight featuring a spot-on ensemble cast that treats the most awkward and embarrassing moments in the rites of passage with affectionate hilarity.

Feels a little uncertain, as if it's moving from present to past under the demands of a screenplay rather than because it really feels that way. But the growing-up stuff is kind of wonderful.

It's an engaging recollection that's more sweet than bittersweet, tempered by an eagerness to please that pulls us into its remembrances of things past.

Tilting between a teen sex comedy and a more sensitive tale about male bonding, The Wood is too anxious to please to quite make up its mind what it is.

This rambling and episodic autobiographical saga of three friends coming of age in Inglewood, Calif. (aka The Wood) in the '80s is so determined to be likable that it forgets to be interesting.

Nostalgia has no real point to make here. All that Famuyiwa can hope to accomplish is to tell his story well. In this area he is less than competent.

The people who made this movie have either seen too much mayhem -- or they haven't seen any.