That was an excellent one.

One of my all time favorites.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

I would have rated this film with 1 star, but it got an additional 1 for Lloyd Nolan's brave performance as a security officer and an extra 1/2 for Ida Lupino as a shrewish wife, and an extra 1/2 for Ralph Meeker's role as a truculent drunk bad dad.But the MUSIC! Oh my God. The music. The horrible synthesizer music bubbling away like little rodential heartbeats as we are supposed to feel fear, tension, drama, interest, or some other emotion which we cannot feel because the music is popping like popcorn farts! Oh, Lord have mercy. If you are the kind of person who can't take bad music, please, be cautious -- the sound track may damage your internal organs.Also this film is a wasteland of bad late 1970s architecture, as it was filmed right before Post-Modern architecture saved us all from architectural cultural suicide. Just keep reciting your mantra, "Later on there would be good architecture. This was not the end of the world." Oh, and there's this insane fainting-gas stuff. The teens buy it at the local convenience store, no doubt. Another reviewer suggested the idea came from "Batman." I concur.And i will offer a sparkly reward to anyone who can tell me the name of the book that Ida Lupino is reading on her bed when Ralph Meeker comes home after a long day in the armoured car industry. My TV was too small to zero in on it, but i have the feeling that if i could have read that title, i would have been rewarded by some sort of fabulous in-joke. Or maybe not.Lloyd Nolan is okay. Ida Lupino is okay. Ralph Meeker is okay. The rest of this movie is insanely useless except to people who want to watch cars crash into one another over and over and over and over again.

Well, my boys might be good boys, but the girls turn out to be real bad. That was actually a pretty neat ending when it turned out Mrs. Morton (Ida Lupino) was Priscilla's (Kerry Lynn) partner. But boy, it sure took a long time getting there. Especially when Lloyd Nolan's character did the interrogation bit at the reformatory. Here's what I don't get - at any point along the way, the security officer from the armored car could have told a client to let the cops know what was going on. Or could have written a note on the pick up log. Didn't that cross anybody's mind? And what was the business with all those cars crashing and running into grocery carts and flipping over on a dirt track? I thought the DVD I was watching suddenly turned into a different movie. You know, back in the Thirties and Forties, when they kept these flicks under an hour and in black and white, they seemed much more tolerable. I'm sure if they made this one with Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy back in the day it would have turned out just fine. Even Ida Lupino would have felt better about it.

Reform school resident Sean Thomas Roche (as Tommy Morton) receives a visit from father Ralph Meeker (as Bert Morton), who informs him schoolteacher mother Ida Lupino (as Bess Morton) is retiring. Clearly, Mr. Meeker and Mr. Roche have some "generation gap" difficulties; but, they pale in comparison with the love lost between the two men and Ms. Lupino. Lupino could care less about her delinquent son; instead, she enjoys tutoring pretty young Kerry Lynn (as Priscilla). Little do the adults know, but the "kids" are plotting… This sometimes confusing, and seldom plausible, "misunderstood kids drama" has a few interesting attributes. Old pro Lloyd Nolan tries to sort out the plot; he contributes greatly to an interesting cast. Prrforming admirably, Mr. Nolan makes everyone sharing his screen time look better. David Doyle, waiting for "Charlie's Angels" to resume, has quite a "My Boys Are Good Boys" backstory to tell. Notably, Lupino's shrewish characterization was her last film appearance, before retiring.

When you think of movie versions of armored car robberies, you might envision this: Tough, ski-masked ex-cons packing automatic weapons, car chases, shootouts, helicopters, the mastermind. My Boys Are Good Boys has elements of this Hollywood stereotype--but it mostly deviates from it. (Don't look for blown-up buildings or police shootouts.) The film casts well-known actors Meeker and Lupino as parents of two of the teens who rob the car. All of the teen bandits in this movie are unknowns, but their acting is adequate. The teens plan the robbery from inside an LA County boys reformatory, with the outside assistance of a female teen, Priscilla, played by Kerry Lynne. Apparently Priscilla has a "bio" mom but lives with her divorced dad (Meeker) and his step wife (Lupino). This is important but I don't want to give away the ending.The writers have taken-up an unlikely idea: "Hey, let's have TEENS rob an armored car instead of grungy ex-cons! It hasn't been done before!" The writer's next hurdle was how to get a teen gang to do it. So they wrote the plot to include a group of incarcerated reformatory boys to pull the heist. Predictably, the group has some trouble trying to break-out of their complex, but once out are picked up by the stepsister of one of the boys (Priscilla) in an SUV. (This is at a time when they still called SUV's "cars.") A baffling attempted assault happens against Priscilla by a "Plain Clothes" or "Off-Duty" (?) cop just before the gang starts its run--this is resolved at the end of the movie. Sort-of. The "cop" seems to be in the movie because the producer said, "Hey, we gotta add more violence and tension to this movie to change the rating or make it hip!" The Criminal Mastermind (there is more than one mastermind) is Priscilla's stepbrother, Tommy. Tommy and his bandits and his stepsister commandeer the specially-targeted armored car, and eventually achieve their goal of a big heist. After some trouble, the boys break back into the reformatory to pretend they had never left.The adults in this movie play various parts such as investigators, parents, clerks, guards, cops. I feel that veteran actor Lloyd Nolan plays some of the best scenes in this movie. Especially good is his grilling of the gang at the reformatory--well-written and directed.I had remembered actor Nolan from various works but I did not know who the actors Lupino or Meeker were until after I viewed this movie. If you are under thirty you may not know anyone in this film.The movie includes the use of some implausible "Batman-like" fainting gas as a goofy device, but you just sort of ignore that because...you saw it on Batman! Also, the movie is too short. Fifteen or twenty-minutes more could have fleshed out the characters and plot and made the movie more enjoyable. Some of the music is effective for setting mood. The title song, MY BOYS ARE GOOD BOYS--is not that great, considering it is a theme. I think that I could have written a better one! Most of the musical score is sort of a electronic synthesizer/country music type. Cheap, no doubt--and it didn't age well. (It is a little better than the funk or disco seen in other 1970's movies, though. I rarely buy DVD's but I bought this movie with 49-other DVD's in a bargain set. I feel that there are only 5 or 7 good movies out of the set, this is one of them. But that's not saying much. Still, because I'm as much of a historian as a movie lover, I will watch the movie again. The work is good for a hoot when you want to relax with something short and familiar, and see what the suburban Los Angeles area was like in 1976 or 1977. (I think it was shot then but released later, not sure.) It is surprising to see what appears timeless after more than 25-years. And what in our culture has disappeared.