Teen drama from The Fifties in which James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo deal with Angst. Notably averts the Teens Are Monsters mindset of the era. Dean is Jim Stark, a Troubled but Cute 17-year-old with a messed-up home life. His mother (Ann Doran) prefers to move whenever a problem comes up rather than confront it and his father (Jim Backus) is a Henpecked Husband who lets her do as she pleases. As a result, the Starks are constantly moving around and have just arrived in Los Angeles as the film opens. At his new High School, Jim befriends Plato (Mineo), an Ambiguously Gay innocent. Jim immediately finds himself up against Buzz (Corey Allen), the local Jerk Jock, but takes somewhat more kindly to Buzz's girlfriend Judy (Wood). Needless to say, she later becomes Jim's girlfriend. Most