Opens
Friday, Sept. 19
As he did in his screenplay for the extraordinary animated feature "The Iron Giant", Tim McCanlies earns the audience's emotional involvement in "Secondhand Lions", every heart-tugging moment of the family tale fueled by a clear sense of character. Scripting and directing this time out, McCanlies has more of an inclination toward schmaltz, but the deft restraint of topliners Michael Caine and Robert Duvall tempers the narrative with a wry, poignant reserve.
Awash in nostalgia, "Lions" combines a gentle coming-of-age story with swashbuckling fantasy. While it lacks a necessary tension in its establishing scenes and might be too soft for those who prefer grittier fare, it's bound to strike a chord with family audiences and older filmgoers in the midst of early fall's more edgy releases and should prove a strong performer for New Line.
In the early 1960s, a time of finned sedans and a certain innocence, 14-year-old Walter Haley Joel Osment), a boy with a prematurely furrowed brow, reluctantly goes along with the latest scheme of his flighty single mother (Kyra Sedgwick). She's on her way to court-reporting school, or so she says, and is dropping him off for the summer with her uncles, two ornery old-timers who own a dusty parcel of land in rural Texas. Garth (Caine) and Hub (Duvall) are rumored to be hoarding millions in cash, and Walter's mission is to find the dough.
If the brothers have a fortune, they haven't been spending it. With no phone or TV, they pass most days sipping iced tea on the porch of their weather-beaten wooden house, which looks like something jointly designed by Edward Gorey and Edward Hopper. They take rifle potshots at the traveling salesmen who venture past their hand-painted signs of dire warning, a ragtag pack of watchdogs and a pig keeping them company.
Among the uninvited visitors are Hub and Garth's inheritance-hungry nephew (Michael O'Neill) and his horrid wife (Deirdre O'Connell), who with their three kids sit huddled on the opposite end of the porch like vultures in their Sunday best.
The brothers' resistance to Walter, mild to begin with, is short-lived -- a bit more friction would have made the payoff that much sweeter. Soon he's inspired them to sample the wares on offer from those salesmen. The strangest of their purchases is one of the titular lions, a zoo castoff Hub and Garth plan to hunt in a mini safari. But the cat is so old and tame that she instead becomes a pet to Walter -- and a key metaphor on the foreseeable arc of McCanlies' story. There's No Doubt that the boy and his great-uncles will forge a deep connection
it's the subtle awakenings Caine and Duvall communicate wordlessly that make the transition so engaging.
Garth, acclimating himself to retirement, spearheads a gardening project, while Hub, whose every fiber is packed with potential energy, bristles at the very notion of old age and the uselessness he fears it will bring. It turns out Hub, in his prime, was a regular Errol Flynn. The details -- or fabrications? -- emerge when Walter asks the more approachable Garth about an old photo, sparking tales of the brothers' youthful adventures: bright, cartoony sequences of cancan dancers, Foreign Legion exploits, romance with a gorgeous North African princess (Emmanuelle Vaugier) and swordplay with a murderous sheik (Adam Ozturk).
In the daunting position of going head to head with two of the finest screen actors around, Osment sometimes appears to be flailing in the face of minimalism. But he brings a heartfelt yearning to Walter, who understandably longs for a dependable adult in his life. When these unlikely parental figures kindle his imagination, the young actor also conveys the empathy of the artist Walter will become -- shown in the present-day sequences that bookend the memory piece.
Duvall, reaping praise for his turn in the self-consciously mythical "Open Range", has a richer role here and delivers a far more affecting performance as a man unwilling to go gentle into that good night. Caine's Garth is a model of equanimity and compassion, his gaze revealing firsthand knowledge of sorrow, his smile bespeaking a life well lived.
The supporting cast does what it can with broadly drawn characters, among them May's thug of a boyfriend (Nicky Katt), while Sedgwick can't quite rise above the stock role of the self-absorbed mother. The first-rate production package brings the film's various settings to evocative life, and the end credits feature lovely cartoon work by Berkeley Breathed.
SECONDHAND LIONS
New Line Cinema
A David Kirschner production in association with Digital Domain Prods.
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Tim McCanlies
Producers: David Kirschner, Scott Ross, Corey Sienega
Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Mark Kaufman, Janis Rothbard Chaskin, Karen Loop, Kevin Cooper
Director of photography: Jack Green
Production designer: David J. Bomba
Music: Patrick Doyle
Co-producer: Amy Sayres
Costume designer: Gary Jones
Editor: David Moritz
Cast: Garth: Michael Caine
Hub: Robert Duvall
Walter: Haley Joel Osment
May: Kyra Sedgwick
Stan: Nicky Katt
Adult Walter: Josh Lucas
Ralph: Michael O'Neill
Helen: Deirdre O'Connell
Sheik's Grandson: Eric Balfour
Young Hub: Christian Kane
Young Garth: Kevin Haberer
Jasmine: Emmanuelle Vaugier
The Sheik: Adam Ozturk
Running time -- 111 minutes
MPAA rating: PG...
Friday, Sept. 19
As he did in his screenplay for the extraordinary animated feature "The Iron Giant", Tim McCanlies earns the audience's emotional involvement in "Secondhand Lions", every heart-tugging moment of the family tale fueled by a clear sense of character. Scripting and directing this time out, McCanlies has more of an inclination toward schmaltz, but the deft restraint of topliners Michael Caine and Robert Duvall tempers the narrative with a wry, poignant reserve.
Awash in nostalgia, "Lions" combines a gentle coming-of-age story with swashbuckling fantasy. While it lacks a necessary tension in its establishing scenes and might be too soft for those who prefer grittier fare, it's bound to strike a chord with family audiences and older filmgoers in the midst of early fall's more edgy releases and should prove a strong performer for New Line.
In the early 1960s, a time of finned sedans and a certain innocence, 14-year-old Walter Haley Joel Osment), a boy with a prematurely furrowed brow, reluctantly goes along with the latest scheme of his flighty single mother (Kyra Sedgwick). She's on her way to court-reporting school, or so she says, and is dropping him off for the summer with her uncles, two ornery old-timers who own a dusty parcel of land in rural Texas. Garth (Caine) and Hub (Duvall) are rumored to be hoarding millions in cash, and Walter's mission is to find the dough.
If the brothers have a fortune, they haven't been spending it. With no phone or TV, they pass most days sipping iced tea on the porch of their weather-beaten wooden house, which looks like something jointly designed by Edward Gorey and Edward Hopper. They take rifle potshots at the traveling salesmen who venture past their hand-painted signs of dire warning, a ragtag pack of watchdogs and a pig keeping them company.
Among the uninvited visitors are Hub and Garth's inheritance-hungry nephew (Michael O'Neill) and his horrid wife (Deirdre O'Connell), who with their three kids sit huddled on the opposite end of the porch like vultures in their Sunday best.
The brothers' resistance to Walter, mild to begin with, is short-lived -- a bit more friction would have made the payoff that much sweeter. Soon he's inspired them to sample the wares on offer from those salesmen. The strangest of their purchases is one of the titular lions, a zoo castoff Hub and Garth plan to hunt in a mini safari. But the cat is so old and tame that she instead becomes a pet to Walter -- and a key metaphor on the foreseeable arc of McCanlies' story. There's No Doubt that the boy and his great-uncles will forge a deep connection
it's the subtle awakenings Caine and Duvall communicate wordlessly that make the transition so engaging.
Garth, acclimating himself to retirement, spearheads a gardening project, while Hub, whose every fiber is packed with potential energy, bristles at the very notion of old age and the uselessness he fears it will bring. It turns out Hub, in his prime, was a regular Errol Flynn. The details -- or fabrications? -- emerge when Walter asks the more approachable Garth about an old photo, sparking tales of the brothers' youthful adventures: bright, cartoony sequences of cancan dancers, Foreign Legion exploits, romance with a gorgeous North African princess (Emmanuelle Vaugier) and swordplay with a murderous sheik (Adam Ozturk).
In the daunting position of going head to head with two of the finest screen actors around, Osment sometimes appears to be flailing in the face of minimalism. But he brings a heartfelt yearning to Walter, who understandably longs for a dependable adult in his life. When these unlikely parental figures kindle his imagination, the young actor also conveys the empathy of the artist Walter will become -- shown in the present-day sequences that bookend the memory piece.
Duvall, reaping praise for his turn in the self-consciously mythical "Open Range", has a richer role here and delivers a far more affecting performance as a man unwilling to go gentle into that good night. Caine's Garth is a model of equanimity and compassion, his gaze revealing firsthand knowledge of sorrow, his smile bespeaking a life well lived.
The supporting cast does what it can with broadly drawn characters, among them May's thug of a boyfriend (Nicky Katt), while Sedgwick can't quite rise above the stock role of the self-absorbed mother. The first-rate production package brings the film's various settings to evocative life, and the end credits feature lovely cartoon work by Berkeley Breathed.
SECONDHAND LIONS
New Line Cinema
A David Kirschner production in association with Digital Domain Prods.
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Tim McCanlies
Producers: David Kirschner, Scott Ross, Corey Sienega
Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Mark Kaufman, Janis Rothbard Chaskin, Karen Loop, Kevin Cooper
Director of photography: Jack Green
Production designer: David J. Bomba
Music: Patrick Doyle
Co-producer: Amy Sayres
Costume designer: Gary Jones
Editor: David Moritz
Cast: Garth: Michael Caine
Hub: Robert Duvall
Walter: Haley Joel Osment
May: Kyra Sedgwick
Stan: Nicky Katt
Adult Walter: Josh Lucas
Ralph: Michael O'Neill
Helen: Deirdre O'Connell
Sheik's Grandson: Eric Balfour
Young Hub: Christian Kane
Young Garth: Kevin Haberer
Jasmine: Emmanuelle Vaugier
The Sheik: Adam Ozturk
Running time -- 111 minutes
MPAA rating: PG...
- 10/1/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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