'Tree of Life' isn't sturdy

By all accounts, "The Tree of Life" had the makings of a fascinating genealogical foraging, as L.A.-based electronics engineer Hava Volterra -- the daughter of an Italian-Jewish physicist who immigrated to Israel as a young man and never looked back -- seeks to understand her late father through the family heritage he kept mum about. Traveling to Italy to visit the places he grew up with her feisty, camera-wielding octogenarian aunt, and interviewing various scholars, she discovers a storied lineage going back to the 13th century that includes prominent Medici-era bankers, a controversial Kabalistic scholar, the first Jewish prime minister of a Western country, and a noted mathematician who stood up to Mussolini's fascism. But her narrated rush of this encyclopedic information -- accompanied by cluttery, grating animation -- is too often a blur of names and dates, as if Volterra can't wait to get back to herself and her feelings about Dad, which becomes a mission to protect his quirk-laden lack of accomplishment (he felt he should have won a Nobel Prize) against the illustriousness of his forebears. It's a sympathetic notion, to be sure, but it leaves one feeling you're on the couch with Volterra, not on a roots quest.

-- Robert Abele

"The Tree of Life." MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 16 minutes. At Laemmle Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869.

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A fascinating presidential race

Though there's nothing extraordinary about the student council president race profiled in Caroline Suh's documentary "Frontrunners," it somehow makes for a thoroughly captivating film. Perhaps it's the bright, decent, appealing kids seen here, or just the idyllic portrait Suh paints of student life at Manhattan's prestigious Stuyvesant High School that gives the picture its charm. Whatever, "Frontrunners" does something high-school-set movies rarely do: It truly makes you wish you were back in 11th grade (well, at least for the 80 fast-paced minutes it takes to track four sets of running mates as they compete to head Stuyvesant's Student Union).

The basics that drive this modest election clearly mirror those of major political races, including, not uncoincidentally, the current battle for the Oval Office. Popularity versus experience, debating prowess, the relevance of campaign platforms, public perception and a candidate's ethnicity all factor in here as students such as the ambitious, sometimes esoteric George Zisiadis and the cheerier Hannah Freiman amusingly stake their claims to the school presidency.