THE BOYS ARE BACK

Director: Scott Hicks
Cast: Clive Owen, Emma Booth, Laura Fraser, George MacKay, Nicholas McAnulty
Run Time: 104 minutes
Country: Australia/United Kingdom
Year: 2009
Language: English
Rating: PG (Coarse language)

A Special Presentation at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival®, The Boys Are Back marks the triumphant return of director Scott Hicks following his Academy Award®-winning film Shine. Based on the memoir by Simon Carr, The Boys Are Back stars Clive Owen (Children of Men, Elizabeth: The Golden Age) as Joe Warr, a habitually roguish sports writer living in Australia who becomes a single parent under tragic circumstances.

After his wife dies suddenly, Joe is saddled with the responsibility of raising Artie (Nicholas McAnulty) and Harry (George MacKay), his two young sons from different marriages. Both boys desperately need their father. Artie struggles to cope with the loss of his mother, while Harry, who’s visiting from England, yearns to understand why his dad left him and his mother in London. Determined to reunite his family, Joe devises a Peter Pan-like strategy of no rules whatsoever, only to find he has a lot to learn about fatherhood and about himself.

Poignant and humorous, The Boys Are Back is a gentle and smartly played story enlivened by drama and tremendous acting. The multi-talented, charismatic and moody Owen shines as Joe, his performance complemented by Hicks’s toned-down direction, which gets close to the actors and conveys their unspoken feelings without becoming bogged down in sentiment. Heart-rending and honestly emotional, The Boys Are Back is handled with equal amounts of tenderness and understanding as it explores what it means to be a parent.

“The pain of divorce and the tragedy of a parent’s death supply the raw emotional materials of The Boys Are Back, making it all the more impressive that director Scott Hicks steers clear of the maudlin and the manipulative in his sensitively wrought adaptation of Simon Carr’s 2001 memoir.” – Justin Chang, Variety

Reviews: www.metacritic.com/film/titles/boysareback

Official Site: www.boysarebackmovie.com

 

Winter/Spring 2010 Film Schedule January 4 - An Education January 18 - Coco Before Chanel February 1 - The Boys are Back February 15 - Cooking With Stella March 1 - Bright Star March 29 - Broken Embraces April 12 - The Maid May 3 - A Shine of Rainbows May 17 - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus May 31 - Chloe June 14 - Micmacs