Secondhand Lions

(4 1/2) A Delightful Time with Duvall, Caine and Osment
As this film opens, a sullen fourteen year old Walter (Haley Joel Osment) is about to be deposited with his two gruff and irascible old uncles against his will by his mother Mae (Kyra Sedgwick) while she supposedly pursues her education and a career. Hub and Garth McCann, played respectively by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine, are no more enamored of the arrangement than is Walter, but an uneasy truce occurs between them as Walter comes to understand their eccentricities and in fact serves as somewhat of an outlet for Garth's desire to settle down somewhat in his final years. One of the elements twhich makes the film a true delight is the extreme nature of the antics of these "old men", whether it is shooting at traveling salesmen for fun or alienating their relatives to maintain their solitude. The backdrop to the story is that Hub and Garth are rumored to be quite wealthy; and in fact Walter's mother instructs him to attempt to locate the source and location of their supposed...

Firstrate Lionhearted
It occurs to me as I sit here pondering my review of "Secondhand Lions" that I must somehow cloak the first words that come to mind. Words, phrases, such as "a feel-good movie" or "good family fun" or "heart-warming." As if it were, well, "uncool" to label a movie such things these days, almost like a movie kiss of death. Isn't this a time of Hollywood special effects? Of hot babes and pyrotechnics? Of gratuitous violence and sensationalism? So it is. And so this movie is not. And oh, we are a glad audience for it!

Haley Joel Osment, to whom many of us in the movie audience were introduced in "Sixth Sense," plays Walter, a young boy whose mother (Kyra Sedgewick) pursues everything in life but motherhood. He finds himself dumped like excess baggage on the well weathered front stoop of his two uncles' country house. The uncles, played with wonderful eccentricity by Michael Caine and Robert Duvall, resist but later embrace...

Wonderful family film! Rare these days.
This was a great movie. I just saw it last night -- for the second time. With Robert Duvall, Michael Caine, and Haley Joel Osment, how could they go wrong? But there's many a film out there that boasts a multi-talented all-star cast and yet still fails to deliver the goods.

SECONDHAND LIONS is not one of them.

The story is about young Walter who is just barely in his teens and is sent to live with his two great uncles. He constantly hears rumors of their hidden treasure that they stole from Al Capone, or took from a wealthy Arab, or obtained through a lawsuit, or...whatever you want to believe. Throughout the movie, Walter learns from his uncles, Hub and Garth, how to grow into a man and what the truly important things are in life; and Garth and Hub learn from Walter how to enjoy life to the fullest.

The drama here is fantastic, and only once does the emotionalism get a little over-the-top (which is why I gave it four stars instead of five). The acting is fantastic. In...

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