Set in the '50s, Heights loosely follows the skewed adventures of the Kurtzman family, whose patriarch, Nate (Joe Mantegna), makes a dicy living from his burlesque house and numbers racket. Nonconformist son Ben (Ben Foster) acts out by dressing up as Hitler on Halloween; his brother Van (Adrien Brody) crashes parties in the white-shoe, WASPy part of town. Ben falls for Sylvia (a decorous but sly Rebekah Johnson), the first black student in their newly integrated school; Van falls for Dubbie (Carolyn Murphy in the Cybill Shepherd role), a bored, rich shiksa. Romance, though, is only an excuse for a lesson in tolerance and ethnic pride. And these characters don't just wear that pride on their sleeves, they scrawl it on their bare chests -- three of them have the word "JEW" painted across their torsos in a scene where they liberate a segregated local pool. Such liberal platitudes and a relentless soundtrack of period pop tunes are all that hold together Levinson's exercise in self-conscious nostalgia.