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‘Secondhand
Lions’ Relies on Too Many Recycled Ideas
By
Pete Brooks
Spectrum staff
Depending upon how much disbelief one is willing to suspend, “Secondhand
Lions” could be described either as an upbeat, family-friendly movie
about growing old — and up — gracefully, or a blatantly manipulative,
awkward pastiche of coming-of-age-story and grumpy old men cliches.
Nonetheless, the film, written and first-time-directed by Tim McCanlies, and
starring Robert Duvall, Michael Caine and Haley Joel Osment of “The Sixth
Sense” fame, generates considerable good will before it squanders it in
the final reel with an outlandish, tacked-on ending.
Duvall’s fans will not be disappointed — he chews his way his through
the film, scene by scene — but Caine’s might. Caine’s performance
as laid-back Uncle Garth is more along the lines of the kindly abortionist he
portrayed in “Cider House Rules,” a less-is-more approach that cedes
the audience’s focus to Duvall’s rambunctious Hub.
Even so, the characters are broadly drawn but not very deep. Nothing that happens
seems to have any consequence. Even when the uncles fire shotguns from their
front porch at a parade of traveling salesmen, there is never any sense that
anyone or anything is in any actual jeopardy.
Osment, especially, doesn’t have much to play. His character, Walter, remains
a bland cipher, on hand solely to be a catalyst for his uncles’ emotional
growth.
The film opens with Walter’s trashy mom (Kyra Sedgwick, in a memorably
over-the-top performance), making plans to dump her son with his two distant
uncles while she goes off to stenographer’s school. She has an ulterior
motive, however; she wants Walter to ingratiate himself with the eccentric older
men in order to get her hands on the stash of cash which local legend maintains
they have squirreled away somewhere.
Driving up to the men’s ramshackle wreck of a house, she and Walter find
the uncles in the pond in the back yard, fishing with shotguns. When confronted
with the prospect of babysitting teenage Walter, Hub sums up their reservations
with a concise “We’re old, dammit. Leave us alone.”
Predictably, Hub and Garth start out as the Great Uncles From Hell, but, softened
by the boy’s humanity, slowly mellow into a pair of the crusty but loveable
old man archetype so common to TV cop show captains and Wilford Brimley Quaker
Oats pitches.
A lot of screen time is allocated to Hub’s sleepwalking, which gives Garth
the opportunity to spin a fanciful yarn about the uncles’ history, sparking
flashback sequences with the men allegedly having swashbuckling adventures in
the French Foreign Legion which entertain the boy to no end.
Later, when Walter questions Hub about the veracity of Garth’s tall tales,
Duvall just snarls, “Those days are over. So are we.”
It’s that kind of film.
About then, another family of relatives, of the transparently gold-digging variety,
come a-calling, oozing smarmy charm and false bonhomie, trying to cozy up to
the famously well-heeled uncles.
Then, um … then the lion shows up. In a crate, accompanied by a couple
of other animals in their own crates, including a giraffe. I swear. Storywise,
I’m not sure what their collective purpose is, other than to allow Hub
a grab-his-chest-and-keel-over scene directly after loading a pallet of 50-pound
bags of “Purina Lion Chow” onto the bed of his pickup truck.
Although Hub bounces back to perfect health in short order, the experience leaves
him feeling useless until a gang of punks — straight out of “The
Wild One” — come in to bust up the corner store they’re shopping
in. After Hub single-handedly delivers the hoodlums the good walloping they so
richly deserve, he brings them home to rehabilitate them. He gives them raw meat
for their black eyes, a fatherly pat on the back and “the talk” before
sending them on their way, better men.
You wish Hub could have given “the talk” to the screenwriter of “Secondhand
Lions” before the final draft was turned in.
Next thing you know, the lion has been released from her crate, and is on the
loose. At once, the entire cast runs into the house, and right back out again,
all 11 of them armed to the teeth, including the three middle-schoolers who let
the damned thing out in the first place. It’s an inspired moment in a movie
regrettably short of them.
Otherwise, the story pretty much proceeds by the numbers.
No sooner does Walter stumble across the uncles’ cash cache than his mom
shows up, slimy new boyfriend in tow. Wackiness ensues as the film rushes to
its out-of-left-field, fairy tale finale.
In the end, I didn’t really mind being manipulated by the O-Henry twist
as much as I regretted the by-rote storytelling that preceded it. The audience
for this type of film may have been well-served, but Caine, Duvall and Osment
deserved better.
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