After watching Secondhand Lions (which we had bought on blue ray as a wild card in a sale), I struggled to comprehend what I had just seen. I viewed the feature about how the story was accepted and produced by New Line Cinema and still felt baffled. The screenwriter / director's four-page rant at a previous producer, who had suggested certain changes, shed more light on the singular mindset behind the film than on the story. At the same time, so many studio officials said how it was the writer's most personal script, and how they absolutely loved it, that I wondered what I might have missed. Turning to the reviews on IMDb as a sanity check, and the majority of the reviews being positive, I was initially not sure I'd seen the same film.
I reckon the most important question the film asks is what stories to believe. Walter is about 13 years old and the only people in his life present him with challenging versions of the truth. At the start of the film, Walter's mother prepares to pack him off to his great-uncles with all kinds of speculations about their wealth, their brief remaining life expectancy, and Walter's chances of becoming their heir just by paying them an unannounced visit for an indefinite period of time. On the other hand, Walter's uncles, who spend most of their time shooting at salesmen and trying to build their own airplane, tell tall tales set in the Middle East about a beautiful princess, an evil sheik, and bags and bags full of gold pieces.
It could be a comedy, given all the flat characters. There is also a suitably annoying bunch of hillbilly relatives and an inconsequential quartet of fight-eager late teens who look like rebels with no cause times four.
But it isn't funny. Just when things get so ridiculous one might want to laugh - the quartet of teens that get beaten to pulp by one of the uncles eagerly take in his Wise Old Man's speech on How To Be A Good Man in the next scene, for instance - there are hugs, eager looks from Walter who wants to hear the speech too and become a Good Man, and intense music to tell us that this is Significant.
However, things that really are significant are brushed under the carpet. Walter is aware that his mother is lying to him; that she is ready to abandon him in search of the next boyfriend; and that the next boyfriend is likely to be an idiot who will end up beating her (presumably like all the previous ones). Instead of dealing with this in a sensitive way, the film gives us a bunch of "keep the kid(s) happy" surrogates.
The uncles provide entertainment in the form of exotic stories, but their idea of providing food amounts to hacking at a vegetable patch with a shovel and shooting fish with a gun. A random lioness turns up who protects Walter from his mother's latest, and predictably violent, boyfriend. The animal does this apparently because Walter had previously set her free in a corn field - where the meat-eater presumably turned vegetarian. Oh, and a surreal amount of money scattered in a basement under the porch (some of it in safes, but with the safe doors open) provides a bit of mystery, but quickly dissolves into irrelevance. Everybody seems to know about it anyway, including the thick relatives; Walter ignores any rumours about theft, and chooses to believe the tales about African adventures and gold pieces; but most of all, the story has lost the plot by this time, and no amount of money stacked wherever can save it.
I've seen films before that were an equal waste of time, but I've never felt compelled to write such a long review of them. Maybe it is because I am trying to comprehend how the studio that produced The Lord of the Rings allowed Secondhand Lions to happen. And how such a respectable cast, and support from a heap of well-trained animals with potential for comedy to boot, ended up in such a mess. The most offensive thing about this mess is how it pretends to be family entertainment, while not a single family value I am aware of is upheld, or parodied, or dealt with in any other mature way. Someone's review on the IMDb said this film was as responsible a type of entertainment for kids as pornography, and I sadly have to agree.
I reckon the most important question the film asks is what stories to believe. Walter is about 13 years old and the only people in his life present him with challenging versions of the truth. At the start of the film, Walter's mother prepares to pack him off to his great-uncles with all kinds of speculations about their wealth, their brief remaining life expectancy, and Walter's chances of becoming their heir just by paying them an unannounced visit for an indefinite period of time. On the other hand, Walter's uncles, who spend most of their time shooting at salesmen and trying to build their own airplane, tell tall tales set in the Middle East about a beautiful princess, an evil sheik, and bags and bags full of gold pieces.
It could be a comedy, given all the flat characters. There is also a suitably annoying bunch of hillbilly relatives and an inconsequential quartet of fight-eager late teens who look like rebels with no cause times four.
But it isn't funny. Just when things get so ridiculous one might want to laugh - the quartet of teens that get beaten to pulp by one of the uncles eagerly take in his Wise Old Man's speech on How To Be A Good Man in the next scene, for instance - there are hugs, eager looks from Walter who wants to hear the speech too and become a Good Man, and intense music to tell us that this is Significant.
However, things that really are significant are brushed under the carpet. Walter is aware that his mother is lying to him; that she is ready to abandon him in search of the next boyfriend; and that the next boyfriend is likely to be an idiot who will end up beating her (presumably like all the previous ones). Instead of dealing with this in a sensitive way, the film gives us a bunch of "keep the kid(s) happy" surrogates.
The uncles provide entertainment in the form of exotic stories, but their idea of providing food amounts to hacking at a vegetable patch with a shovel and shooting fish with a gun. A random lioness turns up who protects Walter from his mother's latest, and predictably violent, boyfriend. The animal does this apparently because Walter had previously set her free in a corn field - where the meat-eater presumably turned vegetarian. Oh, and a surreal amount of money scattered in a basement under the porch (some of it in safes, but with the safe doors open) provides a bit of mystery, but quickly dissolves into irrelevance. Everybody seems to know about it anyway, including the thick relatives; Walter ignores any rumours about theft, and chooses to believe the tales about African adventures and gold pieces; but most of all, the story has lost the plot by this time, and no amount of money stacked wherever can save it.
I've seen films before that were an equal waste of time, but I've never felt compelled to write such a long review of them. Maybe it is because I am trying to comprehend how the studio that produced The Lord of the Rings allowed Secondhand Lions to happen. And how such a respectable cast, and support from a heap of well-trained animals with potential for comedy to boot, ended up in such a mess. The most offensive thing about this mess is how it pretends to be family entertainment, while not a single family value I am aware of is upheld, or parodied, or dealt with in any other mature way. Someone's review on the IMDb said this film was as responsible a type of entertainment for kids as pornography, and I sadly have to agree.