The Boys Are Back

Clive Owen stars as Joe - a disconnected father and sports reporter who suddenly becomes the only parent for his 6-year old son (Nicholas McAnulty), when his wife (Laura Fraser) passes away. With very little parenting skills, and the daunting task of trying to help his son deal with the loss, while he simultaneously tries to come to grips with the death of his wife, the world becomes more complicated when his son from a previous marriage, Harry (George MacKay), decides he wants to come to Australia and spend some time with Joe.

Can Joe become the father he has never been?

Can he handle both boys at the same time?

Call me insensitive, but The Boys Are Back, even though it is based on a true story, is one of the most horribly boring movies I have ever seen. Sure, director Scott Hicks and writer Allan Cubitt (based on the novel by Simon Carr) are trying to grab at our hearts with a story about a man put in the most precarious and devastating of circumstances, but the story never takes form in an engaging and compelling way, unless you are someone who finds Clive Owen to be the dreamiest of dreamboats.

The audience is left with a movie that wanders from scene to scene with no direction. The Boys Are Back is a shapeless film with no point to it, no arc, no plot, and no story, where we go from scene to scene and wonder why any of this is being presented to us. Sure, hunk of hunks Owen is up to the task of evoking some sympathy and emotion from the audience, but I couldn't tell if the kid, McAnulty, was supposed to be playing a mentally challenged character or he's a bad actor. He seems to be in his own world the entire time, rarely interacting with any other member of the ensemble.

The Boys Are Back goes on and on and on and on with no end in sight, no matter how much you pray for a merciful end to come. It fails when it embraces the cliché. It fails when it tries to be different. It just fails all around.

The Boys Are Back is rated PG-13 for some sexual language and thematic elements.