Secondhand Lions (2004, VHS)

With Haley Joel Osment's awkward transition into puberty, his latest feature Secondhand Lions had the potential to make or break his career. In my eyes, it really didn't do either of the two - it just kind of "was". Even those who live vicariously through the achievements of their Hollywood idols probably would still hesitate to place any bets on Osment's future based on what they saw here.

Thankfully, Secondhand Lions is an engrossing enough experience that you won't be thinking about all that throughout the movie. Maybe just in a few spots.

Osment plays the role of 12-year old Walter, a kid who is about as normal as they come. He is riding in the car with his mother (Kyra Sedgwick) who is driving him out to stay with his two uncles, while she is ostensibly headed off for school. The exchange is pretty brief, but tells you basically all you need to know about why she's even in the movie. She knows about the multimillion-dollar stash the two uncles have, and she is using Walter to get to it. It's easy enough to predict the destination; not quite as easy to predict the journey.

The two uncles make an uncomfortable first impression, as characters of this type usually do. Walter doesn't play "Barney the Dinosaur" with them and pretend that their cold indifference doesn't make him uncomfortable -- it does. Here's where the next big surprise comes -- over half of what you see in the trailer happens in the first 20 minutes.

Sitting on the front porch with the two uncles, Walter discovers through a series of declined requests, that there is no phone and no television in the house. A few salesmen come driving by, only to be met with gunfire, and end up squealing away. Then it's bedtime. Not a whole lot happens around the old house with these two guys, and Walter is told he will sleep in the "tower".

Walter discovers a treasure chest up there, and it doesn't take him long to (accidentally) find the key. Inside is nothing but a few inches of sand, but buried in that sand is a picture of a pretty lady named Jasmine. As Walter and the uncles start to communicate more, the story of their past unfolds... okay, that's enough!

Osment, as pointed out by an observant Imdb poster, looks quite a bit like a young Edward Norton, if that makes you feel any more comfortable. 'Cause for most people, watching a Haley Joel Osment movie and enjoying it would be equatable to watching a Hanson concert and enjoying it. People grow up and change, but you never forget the way you first saw them. I thought Osment did a fine job, but I got the feeling like he was being told to act younger than he is, which made some scenes maybe just a bit "cheesier" than they needed to be.

Robert Duvall was spectacular as always playing Uncle "Hub". (I thought it was "Herb" at first and they just pronounced it funny.) You know the routine with him, so if you're sick of it, don't expect a whole lot new here. He gives that distant look, you know it means he has something in his past that won't go away. I'm still not tired of it!

Michael Caine is not as familiar of an actor to me, but he definitely pulls his weight here as Garth. I figured that Lions was going to rely more on Duvall's funniness, as the trailer implied (It would appear that Duvall's line about "dinner table chit-chat" was cut, along with Osment's burp), so the balance of the two roles was a pleasant surprise. Everybody knows a Caine -- he worked with you at the gas station, he was the janitor at your school, or maybe he was the old guy across the street who did all his own yardwork and you wondered where he got the energy. He is a soft-spoken kind of guy who just needs youthful eyes to listen.

Throughout the movie, Garth takes Walter into the past and tells about how he and Hub ended up where they are. This little side-story takes us across the sea and into a war that the two guys unwittingly became a part of. I ain't even about to spoil any of that, but the story retains its place as a backdrop and does not become intrusive. So at least you're not thinking "Oh no," every time Garth opts to delve into another chapter of their swashbuckling adventures.

The rest of the family, aside from the Manly Trinity, I found to be mostly despicable. When they attempted a "bonding" moment at the end, I about hurled. But I did think it was pretty hilarious at one point, when the pet lion that Walter "adopts" escapes from his crate while the family is visiting. Everyone, including the two little boys and the chubby girl in the church dress, grabbed a rifle and headed for the cornfield.

This is another one of those movies where they show the end at the beginning, then they go back to the beginning, and when you get to the end you see that same scene that you saw at the beginning and it all fits together. I'm not keeping count but it sure seems like a lot of movies are doing that lately! Not that I have a problem with it, just a small observation. While I'm on the subject, Josh Lucas gets to play Walter as an adult; that had to be a lot of pressure. I thought he did wonderfully, and at least deserved a mention.

For those who didn't buy into Ricky Fitz' take on death being beautiful in American Beauty, Secondhand Lions offers a more "lucid" approach to the subject. While I am one of the ones who did buy into (most of) Ricky's outlandish philosophy, I found that Lions did just as great a job, if not better, at approaching the fear and uncertainty of death with a passive eye.

I'll go with 3 1/2 stars, but I gotta round it down to three because I got a free admission while I was there, and I fear that it made the experience more wonderful than it might have been otherwise!