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Saint Ralph Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some sexual content and partial nudity) Genre: Comedy, Drama, Sports Theater release: April 08, 2005 by Samuel Goldwyn Films Directed by: Michael McGowan Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes Cast: Adam Butcher (Ralph Walker), Campbell Scott (Father George Hibbert), Gordon Pinsent (Father Fitzpatrick), Jennifer Tilly (Nurse Alice) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Saint Ralph opens in a confession booth, and the litany of adolescent sins confessed tells us succinctly—and humorously—that 14-year-old Catholic schoolboy Ralph Walker (newcomer Adam Butcher) is certainly no saint. But by the time the hapless Ralph has discovered that his confessor is not a priest but rather his fellow students enjoying a laugh at his expense, the audience has already learned to like the awkwardly earnest young man.

Adam butcher is winsome in the lead role as Ralph Walker

Ralph is infamously prone to wander (a scene of accidental arousal in a public swimming pool will be funny to some viewers, objectionable to others), and for the first twenty minutes the movie is perhaps a little too eager to show us the various ways Ralph stumbles into "self-abuse." But if Ralph's body has a mind of its own, his heart is good—yet also burdened. Ralph's father is dead, and his mother Emma (Shauna MacDonald) is gravely ill. When he's not at school or his mother's bedside, Ralph is alone in his parents' house, keenly aware of his odds of becoming an orphan … and already living like one.

Meanwhile, Ralph is a thorn in the side of Father Fitzpatrick (acclaimed Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent), who is the archetypal stern headmaster and priest. After learning of the "Old Testament depravity" of the pool incident, Father Fitzpatrick threatens expulsion and sentences Ralph to daily 6 a.m. Mass and, as an outlet for the boy's "energies," a stint on the cross-country running team. The moment Ralph saunters up to his first practice, extinguishing a cigarette on the way, both the boy and the film take on a new energy and focus.

The team is coached by the enigmatic but empathetic Father Hibbert (Campbell Scott, Secret Lives of Dentists). Ralph already knows Father Hibbert as the Nietzsche-quoting teacher of his ninth-grade religion class, and he's already been pestering him to explain the nature of miracles. Told it will take a miracle to bring his mother out of her coma, Ralph is in search of one. When Hibbert cracks a joke about the cross-country team training for the Boston Marathon, Ralph misunderstands and takes him seriously. The priest tries to correct Ralph's misperception by saying, "Anyone on this team winning the Boston Marathon would be a miracle to match the loaves and fishes." That's all Ralph needs to hear: He figures if he can win Boston, he'll have the miracle necessary to wake his mother.

Father Hibbert (Campbell Scott) instructs Ralph on everything from religion to running

But Ralph has also learned—in Father Hibbert's religion class—that there's still more to making a miracle. Specifically, these three criteria: faith, purity and prayer. Ralph sets to work on all three, aided by his friend Claire (Tamara Hope), the girl who has spurned his affections by declaring her intention to become a nun. Claire tackles Ralph's spirituality like a school project, coming up with various unorthodox ways of improving his prayer life, and their obvious blossoming teenage attraction in the wake of their religious quest is both funny and a welcome antidote for Ralph's loneliness. Claire gives Ralph a book on the martyrs, and Ralph begins to apply the guidance given on discipline and self-sacrifice to the fourth criteria necessary to his miracle: becoming a great marathoner. The spiritual and sporting disciplines are strikingly symbiotic, and Ralph discovers he is a natural and driven runner.

Set in 1953 and 1954 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, the first half of the film is a coming-of-age-in-Catholic-School story that manages to include most of the clichés of that genre (awakening sexuality, the bullying peers who eventually come to respect the protagonist, the oppressive headmaster, the inspiring, iconoclastic teacher, the standoffish love interest.) The second half of the film is an underdog sports story that comes down to the Big Finish, and it likewise contains many familiar elements. But screenwriter and director Michael McGowan, himself a former marathon winner, tells us a story we care about, and young actor Adam Butcher gives us a Ralph we want to cheer. The film's climax is enormously compelling, and there are subtleties along the way that more than compensate for the clichés and contrivances.

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