With a cast including two of the best senior actors around, Robert Duvall ("The Godfather," "Open Range") and Michael Caine ("The Cider House Rules), and child phenom Haley Joel Osment ("The Sixth Sense"), "Secondhand Lions" appeared to be the movie that could break this summer's cycle of disappointments.
Instead, it perpetuates it.
The story begins as 15 year-old Walter (Osment) is dropped off by his mother to stay with his wealthy, but miserly uncles, Hubb (Duvall) and Garth (Caine). Signs lining the edge of their long driveway read "Danger: Explosives," and "Turn Back NOW," setting a tone for the uncles' attitude toward guests.
"The last thing we need is some little sissy-boy hangin' around all summer," says Garth to the uninvited relatives. Of course, that's exactly what they get. These are the kind of guys that sit on their porch toting shotguns waiting for door-to-door salesmen to peak their head out the car door.
Walter soon finds out that his mother has no intention of coming back to pick him up. The uncles have mixed feelings about keeping the boy.
"It's not our fault you've got a lousy damn mother," Hubb snaps. At this point the film still showed promise. As soon as they agree to take care of him, though, all semblance of quality entertainment falls into oblivion.
Walter begins asking Garth to recount the youth he and Hubb spent overseas. The tales are laughably exaggerated, but Walter, the Opie-archetype, hangs on every word.
As other family members visit, trying to woo their way into the family fortune, the uncles carry on in a manner fit to drive them right back out.
In the end, after falling in love with the kindly old grumps, Walter is forced to decide whether to stay with the uncles or live with his neglectful mother and abusive step-father-to-be. Take a wild guess what happens.
However outrageous the movie becomes, what with the adoption of a circus tiger, the beating Hubb unloads on an invisible victim while sleepwalking, and the stories of the uncles' days in the French Foreign Legion, "Secondhand Lions" is not a complete waste of film stock. However, it sure treads the line.
Director Tim McCanlies seems unable to make consistently smooth transitions, cutting from the front porch to the battlefield in the blink of a skeptical eye. He is also unable to make the kind of actor out of young Osment that M. Night Shyamalan was in "The Sixth Sense." Perhaps it doesn't help that Osment's pubescent voice is about the most irritating sound this side of Gilbert Gottfried.
As moving as their performances were, the respective actors might as well have been holding their scripts in front of them. No one, not even Duvall, makes a great impression.
In addition to the plot that seems like an audience member's idea from "Whose Line is it Anyway," there are just a few too many appearances made by pointless characters. Also useless is the presence of four dogs who follow the characters everywhere, and from whom the director too frequently zooms in on to get their apparently crucial dog reaction. Presumably it's an effort to make the film more accessible to kids, but only makes it less accessible to the rest of the audience.
A few life-advice lines in "Secondhand Lions" prove that somewhere behind it all there is heart in the film.
"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true, are the things that a man needs to believe in the most," preaches Hubb, speaking of ideas like "Man is basically good."
The film ends in a way only a senior citizen could love. Seriously, audience members should make sure to bring their grandparents. At least someone will love it.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
