1-800-Hot-Nite

“Are you a bad boy?” asks the voice on the other end of the line – and perhaps, in a way, Tommy (Dallas Dupree Young) is. After all, he has pilfered his half-sister’s credit card, and he is using it to call a phone sex line when he’s several years underage. But there’s not a hint of ill will in this sweet-natured kid who crams into the phone booth with his friends, ludicrously excited by the mere concept of getting to talk to a woman about sex. The couple of minutes during which he manages to pass himself off as an adult are clearly among the happiest in his short life, but what he doesn’t know is that he’s about to have to deal with adult responsibilities on a whole different scale.

Back home, after getting into a row about the credit card and being caught trying to steal beers for his friends, Tommy finds his world turned upside down when the police burst into his home and arrest his dad. With all the adults taken away, he hides, terrified, until a police officer finds him and tries to persuade him that everything will be okay. He and his toddler half-brother just need to go with a social worker and they’ll be looked after. Tommy’s friends, hanging round outside, are not so sure – they have stories about kids in that situation being moved to other states. Afraid of losing everything else in his life as well, Tommy makes a run for it.

The rest of the film follows the kids’ experience as they wander through the city and Tommy tries to figure out what to do next. The only way he can think of to get advice from an adult is to call the phone sex operator again. She’s sympathetic, and the fact that she has problems of her own means that Tommy gets some of the advice he actually needs, rather than the platitudes and obfuscations offered by others. Nevertheless, he’s in a very difficult situation. His adventures range from the terrifying (as he is talked into entering the home of an aggressive group of men ) to the sweet (as he finally plucks up the courage to talk to the local girl he has a crush on). Meanwhile, he has to handle all the usual ups and downs of social interaction at that age.

There’s a deep vein of affectionate humour running through the film. We see the boys try to get high on Vicodin and tease each other over clothing which they’re still expecting their parents to buy. Fights are taken very seriously but no-one expects them to cause serious injury, and friendship can be rekindled in an instant. Emotions are intense and sometimes overwhelming, adding to their vulnerability but also to the magic of the moments when things go right.

Young makes a spirited lead, effortlessly conveying the emotional tumult of his character whilst giving him a sufficiently strong core that viewers of all ages will be able to relate to him. As he lurches from one incident to another, the really big decision he’s faced with is pushed into the background, yet we can still see the process of change. Nick Richey’s script is very effective in capturing the different logic of children and adults. The phone sex operator is at a stage in life where she understands both, and although the way she fits into the story sometimes seems a bit clunky, Richey makes it work at a character level. Overall, this is an entertaining and engaging film, and Young is one to watch.