The Boys Are Back (2009)
Directed by Scott Hicks
Written by Simon Carr
Starring Clive Owen, George McKay, Nicholas McAnulty, Emma Booth, Laura Frasier
Release Date November 12th, 2009
February 1st, 2010
Maudlin theatricality in place of actual emotion, Director Scott Hicks' The Boys Are Back is a lifetime movie from down under. Starring Clive Owen as a father recovering from the sudden loss of his wife, The Boys Are Back is about grief and coping but only in the most general and easy to digest ways.
Joe Warr (Clive Owen) is twice an absentee father. He abandoned a son when he left London to be with Katy, a woman from Australia who he fell in love with at the end of his first marriage. After having a son with Katy, Joe took to the road for his career, he's a top sports writer crossing Australia covering sports.
On a trip home Joe takes Katy to a party and she is suddenly struck down. She died less than a day after being struck with illness. Now Joe is left with a six year old son, Artie (Nicholas McAnulty), he barely knows and at home for the first time for an extended period of time.
What is Joe's idea for bonding with his son? Something he calls free range parenting. The kid can do just about anything he wants. The house soon is a disaster while dad takes Artie for a drive on the hood of the car. When free range parenting begins conflicting with Joe's work he decides to invite his other son, Harry (George McKay), to stay with them and watch over Artie.
Naturally, this plan doesn't work either and soon Joe's job is in jeopardy, Harry is heading back to England and Joe's tentative flirtation with a woman at Artie's school, Laura (Emma Booth), is put on hold.
Scott Hicks hit it big in 1996 with his biography of Musician Savant David Helfgott, Shine. That film earned Hicks an Oscar nomination for Best Director and the film was nominated for Best Picture. Since then he found some success with his 2001 follow up Hearts In Atlantis but has been content directing high end commercials.
His most recent feature prior to The Boys Are Back was also a commercial, well a commercial rom-com, the brutally predictable No Reservation. That film foreshadows The Boys Are Back in theme and pretense. Both films are about loss and grief and both films fail to get beyond the idea of either loss or grief.
Instead, both The Boys Are Back and No Reservation are about the simpleminded emotional manipulations of children and death. In No Reservation the unendingly endearing Abigail Breslin is used only to mechanically maneuver audience sympathies. That job in The Boys Are Back falls on little Nicholas McAnulty and while he is efficient in his task he's also as nakedly obvious.
Clive Owen is a handsome actor who has had numerous opportunities for breakout stardom and just hasn't popped. His best work is morose and worn drama like Closer or the underrated I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. Asked to play light and dark, whole and worn in The Boys Are Back Owen goes for sullen and sad and simply stays there.
Going through the motions of presenting grief and loss as cheap melodrama, The Boys Are Back is pushy and cute and never for a moment earns any of the emotion it intends to elicit. Cut-rate maudlin tear jerker is a genre all its own and The Boys Are Back fits right in.
