This one is going to be short. I liked it, but it was too much. There is such as thing as sentimentality without having actual warmth, and this picture DRIPS of it. I have a reputation for being a sucker for "feel-good" movies, but this one attempts to spoon feed you.

"Secondhand Lions" tells the story of Walter, played by Academy Award® nominee Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense), who is left with his uncles Hub and Garth, played by Academy Award® winners Robert Duvall (The Apostle) and Michael Caine (Hannah and Her Sisters). Hub and Garth are two gruff men who do not like strangers or relatives sniffing around their lives, looking for a piece of the wealth they supposedly have.

As Walter's summer lingers on with the old men, he learns of their history together in Europe and North Africa, where Hub was a member of the French Foreign Legion. However, Walter must also fight rumors of them being retired hitmen who stole thousands from mafia kingpin Al Capone.

The story was legitimately delightful and had a lot to say about putting faith in people, but the picture LOVES to over do it. Warm scenes between Walter and his uncles are very well put together, generating a well constructed ambience. However, a couple scenes are unsubstantiated.

There is one scene where Walter is pleading with Hub not to kill himself by crashing a build-it-yourself plane he bought. Duvall seemed to have no where to come from in the scene, while Osment appeared to be taking the scene too far, face full of tears, voice cracking at a pitch only seagulls would respond to.

Scenes between Walter and his mother were also unfounded emotionally, and for the most of the film, the cinematic expression was contrived and forced from actors who did their best to make their words real. It just doesn't play with me.

On the other hand, director Tim McCanlies, who wrote the picture based on one summer he spent with his uncles, did a fine job of representing the story and flashbacks of the uncles' history through the eyes of a boy becoming a man. Portions of the film's grandeur could be argued as Walter's perception of how everything actually happened. However, I think McCanlies was a little too tied to the material, and didn't have enough objectivity to make it play.

Despite the rich sentimentality, "Secondhand Lions" is one of the best family pics to come out this year, and I do recommend it for children Walter's age to see. It will speak to them a lot better than most adults wounded by their own stories of coming of age. However, it's certainly not one of the best pictures I've seen this year. I felt more legitimate warmth from "Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star."

Benn - Where's the Humanity?