Review: 'My Old School' is a documentary that tells an odd yarn, cleverly using animation and re-enactment.

A peculiar story is told in a peculiar way in “My Old School,” a documentary in which the alumni of a Glasgow high school recall an unusual classmate.

Brandon Lee wasn’t like most of the students at Bearsden Academy when he enrolled in 1993. He seemed more mature than the others, more confident, and also a good deal smarter. He fit in well, was admired by the teachers, and wowed the class by auditioning for one of the lead roles in the school’s musical, “South Pacific.”

It took two years to reveal what was off about Brandon Lee — besides him having the same name as an  actor who had died on the set of “The Crow” earlier that year. The truth was that Brandon Lee was actually named Brian McKinnon, he was 32, and he had been a student at Bearsden Academy in the mid-‘70s, though many of the teachers who were still around 20 years later didn’t recognize him.

Director Jono McLeod interviews a fair number of Bearsden alumni, who recount their impressions of this odd but personable classmate. McLeod also interviews Lee/McKinnon, but the one-time hoaxer allowed only his voice to be recorded, not his face.

How McLeod gets around that limitation is somewhat inspired. He hired an actor to lip-sync the audio of the interview. But not just any actor — the part is performed by the Scottish actor Alan Cumming (“Cabaret,” “The Good Wife”), who in the ‘90s had been cast to play McKinnon in a movie about the incident, a movie that was never made because the subject backed out.

Two more layers of artifice McLeod adds to the mix: He interviews all the Bearsden alums on a set that resembles a school classroom (the original school was torn down in 2010), and he uses animation to re-enact scenes described by the interview subjects. (Fans of the MTV show “Daria” may find the thickly lined look of the animated characters a bit familiar.)

McLeod lets the story roll out naturally, the way it did for the other Bearsden students, letting the revelations unfold naturally. By the end of “My Old School,” all the questions a viewer might want to ask have been answered — as well as a few the viewer probably didn’t consider.

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‘My Old School’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 19, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language. Running time: 115 minutes.