The Boys are Back

The kids are alright: Clive Owen son

Directed by Scott Hicks. Starring Clive Owen, Laura Fraser, Emma Booth, Julia Blake, Natasha Little, George MacKay, Nicholas McAnulty 12A cert, gen release, 104 min

BASED ON a non-fiction book by Simon Carr, this nice-looking but ultimately unsatisfactory hankie- soaker begins with Clive Owen’s widower driving along the beach while his son clings cheerily to the car’s hood. Passersby, appalled by his recklessness, scream abuse, but Clive speeds merrily by.

Carr has, you see, a philosophy about child rearing. He believes the little ones are too cosseted and that the best condition for happy development is a sort of perilous anarchy.

Carr’s on-screen alter ego, Joe (Owen), travels Australia as a sports writer. When his second wife dies of cancer, Joe, a public school-educated Englishman, has to come home and reacquaint himself with the disciplines of daily family life. His young son is understandably traumatised, but, allowed to eat crisps at midnight and dive-bomb the overflowing bath, he slowly reaches an accommodation with grief.

Events are, however, further complicated when Joe’s older boy (from a marriage to, Natasha Little’s performance suggests, the wicked witch of North London) is sent to spend time with his dad. Chaos deepens and it looks as if Joe may fail to keep hold of either child.

Yes, the plot does, indeed, seem a bit thin. Though he always appears on the point of karate- chopping a Russian Mafioso, Owen is charismatic and the Australian locations consistently attractive. The Boys Are Backis, nonetheless, little more than a sequence of child-rearing dilemmas arranged in increasing order of seriousness.

Some viewers – those addicted to Dr Philperhaps – may find the case studies interesting, but even they may wonder why Carr's safety-last thesis gets rapidly sidelined after the opening 20 minutes. Were the producers worried that viewers might sue when their children, following the author's advice, leaped from second-storey windows or went swimming with barracuda?

At any rate, the result makes for a strangely disordered, though largely harmless slab of anti- entertainment. And there’s no Thin Lizzy to be heard anywhere.