Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 9-July-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Secondhand Lions (2003)

What surprises me most about "Secondhand Lions," other than how much I enjoyed it, is that it wasn't adapted from a recent children's "classic" in which some studio executive saw the glint of gold. No, this unabashedly sweet film was created from scratch by Tim McCanlies, who apparently wrote and directed it by envisioning the most beloved book from your childhood in cinematic form. This is a story about the power of stories to define a person's life. For young Walter (Haley Joel Osment), this works in positive and negative ways. As the movie opens, he's subjected to another lie by his vagabond mother (Kyra Sedgwick) and unwillingly dumped at the rundown ranch of his great-uncles Hub and Garth (Robert Duvall and Michael Caine). These old coots don't exactly roll out the welcome mat, being cranky and averse to visitors (some of whom are treated to rounds of buckshot), yet they hold the key to a vast and wondrous treasure.

Most folks regard (and covet) this treasure as a heap of ill-gotten cash hidden somewhere on the brothers' property, but Walter learns differently after he's reluctantly taken in. For Hub (the roughneck) and Garth (the bookworm) are men of a bygone stamp with amazing stories to tell. Stories of their own fully lived pasts, fit to turn the head of a lonely, uninspired boy and presented by McCanlies as swashbuckling flashbacks with sniveling villains and exotic lands. When Garth relates his adventures of love and bravery, Walter's nights are filled with magic, and the spell remains unbroken during the day. The brothers continually reaffirm their eccentricity by doing things like mail-ordering a lioness and building an airplane from old parts and imagination. Unlike the world his mother spins around him, chilled by desperation and harsh reality, his uncles forge an existence from ideals. The movie is a pleasure to watch because it reflects their striking conviction.

It's a pleasure, too, to see the accomplished cast enjoying such a gentle but significant tale. Duvall stands out in the meatier role of Hub, who can say things like "I've won and lost a dozen fortunes, killed many men, and loved only one woman" without sounding the least bit phony. He emerges as the archetype of masculinity for any young boy (or impressionable older movie critic) in a scene where he thrashes a group of punks and then takes them home and lectures them on what it means to be a man (immediately after walking out of the hospital where he was being treated for a heart condition, no less).

"Secondhand Lions" is the kind of movie they don't make anymore about the kind of heroes they don't make anymore. It's a tad corny and far-fetched, but in an earnest way, and it reminds us (yes, we all knew this sometime) that the good life is modeled on the stories that stir our souls.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.