World’s most adequate dad
The Boys Are Back / With a title like The Boys Are Back and a plot summary not unlike Mr. Mom, the most surprising thing about director Scott Hicks’ newest film is how it manages to avoid sitcom-stylized antics and treacly moralizing. The subject matter is shamelessly made for Lifetime channel, via Spike TV: Joe Warr (played by Clive Owen utilizing every trick of acting with the eyes) is a successful sportswriter who lives life like the games he covers, returning to his palatial estate in Australia as the conquering hero, arms full of presents for his pretty wife (Laura Fraser) and his precocious six-year-old son Artie (Nicholas McAnulty). When sudden death occurs in the form of terminal cancer with his wife, Joe has to step up to the plate and win one for the home team, only to learn that, much like the sports he covers, it’s harder than it looks. But wait, there’s more! As it turns out, when Joe’s son from a previous marriage stops in for a visit, he’s forced to go into overtime with parental duties.
Despite what could have been a rote, limp treatise on responsibilities of fatherhood, Boys performs, albeit only adequately, based on the strength of the two main roles of father and son. Owen, used far too often as the chiseled pithy action hero, gets to do some real acting here, and the script, adapted from the memoir by British columnist Simon Carr, manages (for the most part) to avoid clichés such as a man and his vacuum and the “kids say the darndest things” style of scriptwriting. Most of this comes from Joe’s character, who doesn’t care for rules and structure. He delights in making women fret about the zipline installed in his backyard and letting Artie sit on the hood of his SUV as he races past beachgoers, all of whom admonish him for his willful endangerment of his child. These early acts show some genuine warmth and playfulness, of course, there are lessons to be learned. That’s where Boys falls back into line with familiar territory, the most egregious coming from the random appearances of Joe’s dead wife returning to offer celestial advice.
All told, The Boys Are Back is a perfectly adequate coming-of-age film for adults, even though the end result seems like little more than a vanity project. Simon Carr is certainly not the first to lose his wife and been forced to reappraise his role as a father. He’s not even the first one to write about it. Since he offers no advice and little in the way of resolving his own problems, one wonders why he thought we’d be interested.
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