00-00-0000 Back off, girl, he's a big boy now By CAROLYN HAX, THE WASHINGTON POST Date: 02-23-2003, Sunday Section: LIVING Edtion: All Editions.=.Sunday Column: TELL ME ABOUT IT Q. A friend from college ("Ian") recently came back into my life. He had...

Two of the most familiar families in America are separated by a few feet. Onstage, Hanson is belting out "Merry Christmas Baby." Seated in the front row, the Clintons are nodding along. It is debatable which family has inspired more fuss during the...

[Mr. Coppola has neither a personal statement to make in You're a Big Boy Now nor a personal style in which to make it.] His story is a compendium of clichés partially disguised in fancy dress, and his style is an anthology of what used to be new among the avant-garde pussycats—tricks and gimmicks that have now been so thoroughly absorbed into film language that you can see them any night on the television commercials. (pp. 98-9) To give this mess movement, Mr. Coppola relies very heavi...

[In You're a Big Boy Now] Coppola shows a fine feeling for New York's grimy excitement, especially in a sequence in which his young hero peeps in and out of porny book stores and amusement parlors on 42nd Street; the cinéma-vérité casualness, bouncy editing, and Lovin' Spoonful music nicely render the city's exuberance without skimming its sordidness. The story, what little there is, concerns a boy's effort to break the complicated parental bonds (his ...