Telling Lies In America

Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' roll! This tidy, heartfelt sleeper from screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Guy Ferland is loosely based on Eszterhas's own adolescence as a rock-loving Hungarian immigrant in 1960s Cleveland. Karchy Jonas (Brad Renfro) is an unpopular 17-year-old Catholic high-school kid with a dream: to enter radio station WHK's High School Hall of Fame -- essentially a popularity contest run by smooth-talking hipster disc jockey Billy Magic (Kevin Bacon). Karchy cheats his way in, badly forging a stack of ballots while steadfastly denying any wrongdoing, but Magic admires the kid's moxie and offers him a job helping out around the station. Magic seems to...