After a brief credit sequence shot underwater, "Mean Creek" opens with an overweight teenager setting up a video camera, through which we see him shooting baskets. A classmate comes along and starts playing with the camera, which earns him a beating when the first kid sees him.

		'Mean Creek' Rating: R for language, sexual references, teen drug and alcohol use. Starring: Rory Culkin, Ryan Kelley, Scott Mechlowicz, Josh Peck. Director: Jacob Aaron Estes.

Even after the videocam gets shut off, "Mean Creek" continues to look like offhand footage, using natural lights and a handheld camera that doesn't make the film look pretty (that comes later, on an Oregon river).

Instead, "Mean Creek" looks like real life, the place where bullies beat up kids and bored teenagers try to assert their manhood, where people turn out to be more complicated than they appear and whatever can go wrong often does.

This low-key but emotionally charged first feature from writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes starts with bully George (Josh Peck) whaling on little Sam (Rory Culkin), whose brother, Rocky (Trevor Morgan), vows revenge. The older boy's friends, Marty (Scott Mechlowicz) and Clyde (Ryan Kelley), egg him on. George has picked on some of them, too.

They decide to get back at George by inviting him along on a boat ride, during which they plan to humiliate him. But George isn't what they -- or we -- expected. And when Sam's friend Millie (Carly Schroeder) finds out what's going on, she wants no part of it.

The emotional balance rocks back and forth as the six young people row down the river. Our sympathies shift with each new ripple and, ultimately, the characters have to deal with the consequences of what happens in a welter of confusion over the best way to proceed.

The cast, which boasts solid acting credits and mostly unfamiliar names (Culkin being the main exception), is splendid. It helps that their characters seem as real as the kids next door and that the narrative unfolds as naturally as the pretty summer day during which the action takes place.

The movie's swirling emotional currents take us for a spin. Much of what happens is powered by the perils of puberty, the challenges of measuring up to the next guy and never allowing yourself to be perceived as a wuss.

Marty enjoys torturing Clyde by insinuating he's gay (using a slur word for the purpose), which stings him in part because Clyde's father lives openly with another man. The adults in this movie come off just as teenagers like to see their parents, present but clueless.

Marty, who has the look and the swagger of a young-punk movie idol, keeps making reference to the male organ (and uses a common word for the female genitals to describe people who back off a plan, whether it's due to an attack of fear or an outbreak of common sense).

In other words, George isn't the only bully here. This is a movie about young people beginning to understand the treacherous shoals awaiting them on the journey to maturity.