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 Second Hand Lions Sep 05, 2010
This is a sleeper. A fairy tale all ages would love. I never get tired of watching it.
Feel Good Into your Soul Aug 30, 2010
I purchased this movie thinking ok, it has an animal in it and so therefore the kids would like it. I would be able to do some household chores. Not so much. I was glued to the TV myself. Oh, and rough and tumble man of the house, glued just as much. We both thought that we were getting a cheesy kids movie, and actually we got a great parent movie too. Watching the shenanigans , was funny and watching the boy who was pretty much abandoned get a full life, was heart touching. I know I related to how the young boy was never given the option to have a life, until he lived with his uncles. This movie is great for the whole family, the clean fun, great jokes, and of coarse the animals. (no they don't talk)
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 bad movie Aug 29, 2010
Not a good movie, here's why. First, the story is unbelievable. Haley Joel Osment is an annoying whiny little kid who's voice cracks all the time. And who stores paper cash down in the basement of a barn? Second, the title is Secondhand Lions. I thought it would have more to do with Lions, but the Lion plays a very minor role in the movie. Don't waste your money like I did.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
"The kid gets it all..." Aug 23, 2010
SOME SPOILERS
I admit it. I cried at the end of SECONDHAND LIONS. This warm and amazingly touching story struck a deep chord inside me. In terms of "Family Values" this film is exemplary.
Young Walter (later "Walt") is a boy on the verge of becoming a man in 1962 Texas. His sweet but careless and flighty mother, Mae (Kyra Sedgwick) has a long history of dropping him off "for two weeks or a month or two or three months" with relatives or at orphanages while she pursues her own life's dreams, which boil down to mostly finding a husband (employment status unimportant; criminal record expected; domestic violence unavoidable).
Having run out of siblings and Sisters of Mercy, Mae takes Walter to spend the summer with her two great-uncles, Hub (Robert Duval) and Garth (Michael Caine). When Walt arrives the two old men are sitting on the front porch of their falling-down house, shotguns at the ready, waiting for traveling salesmen. They accept "the kid" without comment, wave off his inquiries about TV and telephones, and commence shooting at every widget salesman that pulls up to the door. Walt is terrified, and tries to run off, only to discover that Mae has lied to him yet again regarding her whereabouts. Defeated, he returns to Hub and Garth, who, much to their credit, welcome him back and treat him not as a child or an unwanted houseguest, but as an equal.
Walt awakens one night to find Hub armed with a plunger, swordfighting in his sleep. Used by now to the unexpected from his eccentric uncles, bemused but not afraid, he inquires of Garth exactly what is going on. Garth begins to spin a fantastical tall tale of the two brothers joining the Foreign Legion and fighting the Sheiks of Araby. In colorful, entertaining, action-packed sequences, the details of Garth's stories are played out in Walt's mind.
As the stories unfold, Walt learns that his uncles are fabulously wealthy men who traversed the world in search of adventure in their young years, but now they're "all used up." Walt discovers that Hub has loved and lost his wife, the beautiful Arabian princess, Jasmine, and that his heart is forever broken.
As Hub and Garth unlock Walter's imagination his own buoyant energy revitalizes them. At first they keep it within bounds. They start a vegetable garden. They stop shooting at visitors. Then their long-dormant madcap energy takes over. They buy a secondhand lion from the circus as a pet for "the kid" (he names her "Jasmine"). Hub purchases an old biplane (neither brother is a licensed pilot). After Hub singlehandedly fights off a pack of hoodlums, he gives them his famous, "What Every Boy Needs To Know About Becoming A Man" speech. They go off, chastened. Walt, who misses the moment, makes his uncle swear to live long enough to give him the speech. The stories continue, wonderful stories full of honor and bravery, and loyalty and love. Are they true? They don't have to be true in order for us to believe them.
We never actually hear "The Speech" itself, but SECONDHAND LIONS is the speech personified---Simply this: "REALLY Live."
Amazingly, as the "Extras" tell us, SECONDHAND LIONS took over ten years to be produced. Screenwriter/Director Tim McCanlies based this story on his own life growing up in Texas, not so much in fact, as in sensibility. McCanlies, who lost his own father at a young age, crafted this coming-of-age film as a heartfelt expression of what older mentors can teach to younger men.
It was worth the wait.
Waht a Joy! Aug 23, 2010
All three actors were a credit to each other. Always a joy to see a good script, editing and action. Duval and Caine together and of course young H.J. Osement. A must for a good laugh and good action. Enjoyed every minute of it.
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