How seriously does The Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys take its title? At first, it seems, not seriously at all. Adapted from a novel by Chris Fuhrman, Lives recounts the initially unspectacular adventures of four Catholic-school malcontents led by Kieran Culkin and his more imaginative and daring best friend, Emile Hirsch. Their most daring activities involve sips of stolen booze and a collaborative comic book featuring thinly veiled superhero alter-egos with names like Captain Ass-Kicker and Major Screw, and their greatest danger lies in the threat of discovery by a one-legged nun played by Jodie Foster (whose Egg Pictures produced the film). The idyll doesn't last long. Hirsch's romance with troubled classmate Jena Malone helps complicate matters, as do Culkin's domestic problems, one of the community's worst-kept secrets. In one memorable scene, Culkin, from the vantage of the backyard, watches Hirsch watching television with his face mere inches from the screen, using a generic-looking drama to escape from the parents screaming behind him. The film could use a few more scenes like that. Frequent cutaways to animated depictions of Hirsch's plot-echoing comic-book fantasies provide needless counterpoint to a coming-of-age tale already eager to spell out its concerns. (The boys' exploration of the middle ground between Foster's oppressive authority and their beer-soaked debauches already comes underscored by a cameo from William Blake's The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell.) What saves the film from turning into Stolen Summer 2: Back In The Habit is the gravity of the acting. Vincent D'Onofrio has a funny supporting role as a heavy-smoking priest whose enthusiasm for the job seems to have faded just after seminary. But his young costars carry the film, creating real characters from a generally flat script and Peter Care's largely undistinguished direction, both of which conspire to keep Altar Boys' danger at a distance.