There is a story, oft told, behind the story on screen. On-the-make actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, best friends since grade school, wrote the script for themselves to act in. There's more to it than that, but it doesn't get more interesting, and nor does the story on screen, a mewlingly immature concoction about an unrecognized genius (with a say-so talent for mathematics, undemonstrable on screen, along with a photographic memory and a ready fund of arcane knowledge), abused as a foster child and now wasting away in blue-collar obscurity, in and out of jail for fits of anti-social behavior. The entire drift of the thing, the surge and gush of it, is toward recognizing him for his specialness (task of MIT professor Stellan Skarsgard), "reaching" him (task of nontraditional therapist Robin Williams, trying to stay serious), loving him (task of upper-crusty British expatriate and Harvard pre-med student Minnie Driver). Him, him, him. The movie is in no big hurry to get to the fuzzy feelings and warm hugs, and is more comfortable when bumming around with four foul-mouthed buddies than when wrestling with dark demons and deep truths, but it is nonetheless a surprisingly conventional turn for its devoutly unconventional director, Gus Van Sant. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd