SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Lawbolisted Powerful

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

HotToastyRag Usually, in this formula of coming-of-age films, it's a troubled young girl who gets sent to her grandmother's house, ultimately learns the errors of her ways, and becomes a better person. In Secondhand Lions, Haley Joel Osment gets sent to his great-uncles' farm. This type of squeaky-clean, goody-goody story is usually watched by women, which is why they usually star women. The added testosterone of three men in the lead roles made the film feel a little strange. Tim McCanlies's script tried to add a masculine plot line about finding a hidden stash of gold, but it was a storyline that didn't really appeal to women. All in all, the film doesn't really work.Michael Caine and Robert Duvall play Haley's great-uncles, and the real problem with the film is spoken by the latter's character. He says, in teaching a life lesson to his nephew, that he believes all people are genuinely good. The reason this line of dialogue doesn't resonate is the same reason the rest of the film doesn't work: it's not speaking to the right audience. If a grandmother character said that line to her granddaughter, the women in the audience would feel warm and fuzzy inside and the movie would have been a hit. Women, especially in this genre of films, have a special close-knit circle of "girl power" that would make that line believable. Men face disappointments as soon as they are old enough to chase after their dreams; they live through daily struggles, internal frustrations, and never-ending regrets. I can't imagine a man of Robert Duvall's age truly believing that all people are good.

blanche-2 Michael Caine and Robert Duvall are the "Secondhand Lions" in this 2003 film featuring Haley Joel Osment, Kyra Sedgwick and Josh Lucas.Set in 1962, Caine and Duvall are brothers Garth and Hub, in their fifties when the film begins. They live an isolated life with five dogs and a pig on a farm. They mostly sit on the porch with rifles and shoot at salespeople -- the word is out that Garth and Hub have amassed a fortune.This knowledge attracts unwelcome relatives to the farm as well. One day their floozie niece (Sedgwick) drops off her quiet, sad son Walter and heads for a courtroom transcriber school. So she says. What she wants is for Walter to find their uncles' money while she's away.Garth and Hub don't want Walter, but soon, the boy begins to enjoy himself. One day a salesman comes to offer Garth and Hub a skeet shooter. They're about to pull their guns when Walter says, What good is money if you don't spend it? Soon the men are buying all kinds of things, including new clothes for yard work for themselves and Walter, seeds for planting, and a lion they plan on shooting. The lion they get is female and old - and they don't end up shooting it.Walter finds a photo of a beautiful woman in his room and asks Garth about it. Garth tells Walter stories about the mens' adventures when they were young, which include fighting off a sheikh in a distant land and saving the fair Jasmine, whom Hub marries and is the woman in the photo. But she's not there now, and Walter wonders what happened to her.What a beautiful film that shows the power of love and connection as these two grouches, considering their lives over, save this boy, bounced around while his mother finds new boyfriends, and how he enriches theirs. There is a great deal of humor and poignancy here. This is so much more than a family film. You have two stellar actors, Caine and Duval, for one thing, a beautiful performance by Osment, and excellent supporting players, particularly Sedgwick, a favorite of mine.I've probably seen about 4500 films in my life, most of which are reviewed by me on IMDb. Discounting the classics of the Golden Era and just taking the post-1960 films, I think some of the best were Road to Perdition, Phoenix, No Country for Old Men, Interiors, Remember, Divided We Fall, Run Lola Run -- in the end, maybe 25 stick out as being special. This is one.I think today with so much turmoil around us, we need to get in touch with some simpler values and take a break from all of the dark films and the CGI technique once in a while. There is nothing hokey about this film, and I highly recommend it.

LeonLouisRicci Once in awhile Hollywood takes a chance on a Family Friendly throwback to an innocent age before the Code broke down and a Rating System was installed. A time when Movies at times, and audiences were routinely given a joyful juvenile fun filled escape with poignant Life Lessons that entertained. Fairy Tales and Storylands unscathed by cynicism.Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, and Harry Osmet are forced into approximation and the screen comes alive with a Coming-of-Age Tale of Male Bonding and Wonder. The Movie is expertly imaged with swashbuckling adventure and contains wishful things like True Love, being a Real Man, and animal sidekicks.Some say that this is pure Cornball and the Film knows that and plays it well. A beautiful looking Film, but the Critics were tepid. One wonders why and perhaps it's all that cynicism that infects the intellectual with a worn out attitude and the heart suffers. Inspirational, charming, and certainly a treat for Family viewing.

Marc Weide After watching Secondhand Lions (which we had bought on blue ray as a wild card in a sale), I struggled to comprehend what I had just seen. I viewed the feature about how the story was accepted and produced by New Line Cinema and still felt baffled. The screenwriter / director's four-page rant at a previous producer, who had suggested certain changes, shed more light on the singular mindset behind the film than on the story. At the same time, so many studio officials said how it was the writer's most personal script, and how they absolutely loved it, that I wondered what I might have missed. Turning to the reviews on IMDb as a sanity check, and the majority of the reviews being positive, I was initially not sure I'd seen the same film.I reckon the most important question the film asks is what stories to believe. Walter is about 13 years old and the only people in his life present him with challenging versions of the truth. At the start of the film, Walter's mother prepares to pack him off to his great-uncles with all kinds of speculations about their wealth, their brief remaining life expectancy, and Walter's chances of becoming their heir just by paying them an unannounced visit for an indefinite period of time. On the other hand, Walter's uncles, who spend most of their time shooting at salesmen and trying to build their own airplane, tell tall tales set in the Middle East about a beautiful princess, an evil sheik, and bags and bags full of gold pieces.It could be a comedy, given all the flat characters. There is also a suitably annoying bunch of hillbilly relatives and an inconsequential quartet of fight-eager late teens who look like rebels with no cause times four.But it isn't funny. Just when things get so ridiculous one might want to laugh - the quartet of teens that get beaten to pulp by one of the uncles eagerly take in his Wise Old Man's speech on How To Be A Good Man in the next scene, for instance - there are hugs, eager looks from Walter who wants to hear the speech too and become a Good Man, and intense music to tell us that this is Significant.However, things that really are significant are brushed under the carpet. Walter is aware that his mother is lying to him; that she is ready to abandon him in search of the next boyfriend; and that the next boyfriend is likely to be an idiot who will end up beating her (presumably like all the previous ones). Instead of dealing with this in a sensitive way, the film gives us a bunch of "keep the kid(s) happy" surrogates.The uncles provide entertainment in the form of exotic stories, but their idea of providing food amounts to hacking at a vegetable patch with a shovel and shooting fish with a gun. A random lioness turns up who protects Walter from his mother's latest, and predictably violent, boyfriend. The animal does this apparently because Walter had previously set her free in a corn field - where the meat-eater presumably turned vegetarian. Oh, and a surreal amount of money scattered in a basement under the porch (some of it in safes, but with the safe doors open) provides a bit of mystery, but quickly dissolves into irrelevance. Everybody seems to know about it anyway, including the thick relatives; Walter ignores any rumours about theft, and chooses to believe the tales about African adventures and gold pieces; but most of all, the story has lost the plot by this time, and no amount of money stacked wherever can save it.I've seen films before that were an equal waste of time, but I've never felt compelled to write such a long review of them. Maybe it is because I am trying to comprehend how the studio that produced The Lord of the Rings allowed Secondhand Lions to happen. And how such a respectable cast, and support from a heap of well-trained animals with potential for comedy to boot, ended up in such a mess. The most offensive thing about this mess is how it pretends to be family entertainment, while not a single family value I am aware of is upheld, or parodied, or dealt with in any other mature way. Someone's review on the IMDb said this film was as responsible a type of entertainment for kids as pornography, and I sadly have to agree.