Poor Karchy Jonas (Brad Renfro) — he's got a Hungarian accent he's trying to get rid of, he's picked on mercilessly at a rich school where he sticks out like a sore thumb, and he's still a virgin. You could say his prospects aren't great. So what does he do? The ever-resourceful young man engineers winning an on going local popularity contest sponsored by the locally idolized DJ, Billy Magic (Kevin Bacon), by sending in dozens and dozens of cards which he's forged himself. Now not only does Billy see right through it, but when Karchy adamantly refuses to confess to the con job, the less-than-above-board DJ also sees a lot of himself in the kid. In fact, he's so impressed that he takes Karchy under his wing and makes him his apprentice — the perfect apprentice, really. Because Billy, himself just a step ahead of the law, has his own shady agenda for Karchy. The kid's naivete and talent for lying make him the perfect middle-man for Billy's corrupt pay-off schemes with the local record companies. It's a neat arrangement: Karchy suddenly finds himself with money and social prestige, helpful for courting a local would-be girlfriend (Calista Flockhart), (notwithstanding the fact that Billy has also bought Karchy a prostitute with whom he loses his virginity) and Billy has the perfect dupe for his small-time illegal activities. And all along the way, the audience gets a bittersweet, slightly cynical primer on the good-ol' American way, ending with Karchy and his hard-working Pop (Maximillian Schell) finally taking their naturalization tests for becoming U.S. citizens.

It's not exactly new material, but it's intelligently written and deftly handled, with just the right combination of sincerity, sweetness and cynicism. And everyone in the cast, bar none, is exemplary. But let's face it, the film revolves around Kevin Bacon's smooth-talking, con-man-of-a-DJ, Billy Magic.

Bacon, always an excellent actor, is just terrific here: funny, cool, magnetic, smartly sleazy, devious; in short, everything you wouldn't want as a role model for your teenage son (at least, if it were still 1961) but exactly the kind of character any kid would love to have as a role model. And Bacon gets the DJ riffs dead-on: the voice, rhythms, slang, everything. Nor does he cheat on the moral complexity of the character. The fact is, you're not sure, even up till the final fade, whether you should really like him or not. One thing is sure, though — it's an Oscar-level performance.

Telling Lies in America is hardly ground-breaking cinema, but it's a thoroughly likable, well-made piece of entertainment, signalling Mr. Ferland as a young, up-and-coming talent to be watched. But what it really shows is what Mr. Eszterhas can do when he works from the heart rather than from a few feet lower.