This film is made with such a warm, photgraphic style that it could have been about the secret lives of moths and I wouldn’t have cared. I give it a million kudos; it’s a beautiful, cute and unique true story about a family trying to find themselves again after the death of their wife and mother. Clive Owen magically stars as Joe Warr, the softspoken workaholic sports writer, who has to struggle to hold the fort and raise his son Artie and maintain the ties between his son from another marriage, Harry.
The film starts with a shot of Joe (Clive Owen) driving his car along the beach at a great speed with his five-year-old son Artie on the bonnet, yelling with excitement. It introduces the element of fun to the story; we see the pain and the grief after Joe’s wife dies of cancer but we also see how the boys handle life by themselves. Unable to grasp the idea of taking control of a household he was rarely home to see and being a single parent, he creates a rule of “Just Say Yes”, of which the boys are able to do whatever they like as long as it does not hurt anyone.
To add to the story, Joe’s son Harry (in his early teens) from a previous marriage, comes to visit his father and meets his half-brother Artie for the first time. As it goes, the three boys become a little team, a family. Joe abandons his work, the children revel in the freedom—it’s a holiday for them, diving into the bath with goggles, having pillow fights every night, et cetera. The main thing that touched me was the way the film portrayed how hard it was for a young boy to understand death. Artie asked his father before his mother died, “Will she die before dinner? Will she die before bedtime?” It wasn’t only a story about a father trying to deal with a life without his wife, but also a child dealing with it as well.
There were very few flaws; it was dreamy, boasted a beautiful soundtrack, and any movie with quality child actors is a gem. One of the best this year.
THE BOYS ARE BACK
Directed by: Scott Hicks
Based on the novel by Simon Carr