Bookdads : Movie Review: The Boys Are Back
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The Boys Are Back is a movie about grief, loss, and the necessity to reinvent ourselves. But above all, it's a movie about fatherhood. Based on the memoir of the same name by Simon Carr, The Boys Are Back is the story of Australian sportswriter Joe Warr's (Clive Owen) journey into single fatherhood after the death of his wife. As Joe struggles with his own grief and tries to learn the ropes of single fatherhood, he must also find a way to reconnect with his six-year-old son Artie (Nicholas McAnulty). The first half of the movie focuses on Joe and Artie and their new relationship, as Joe now finds himself to be his son's primary caregiver rather than his wife. Artie is alternately an exuberant six-year-old boy who likes to cannonball into hotel room jacuzzis, and a child who lies on the floor for an hour at a time lost in sorrow over his late mother. Joe learns to cope with his son's emotions as well as his own, and develops a unique style of parenting based on the motto "Just Say Yes". The resulting household is chaotic, disorderly, and downright reckless (parents will cringe at scenes of Joe playing hide and seek outside with children at night, or of Artie riding on the windshield of Joe's car as they drive headlong down the beach). It is also a household filled with love, and arguably just what Artie needs.
The second half of the movie belongs to Joe's teenage son from a previous marriage, Harry (George MacKay), Harry has been living with his mother in England, but has now decided to come and live with his father in Australia. A more withdrawn and serious child than Artie, Harry has a lot to cope with upon his arrival - this strange and unfamiliar country, his father's household that is always on the edge of disaster, and his new little brother. But more than that, there is an underlying tension between Joe and Harry, as if neither of them can figure out how to be father and son together. It is only when Harry flees back to his mother - and Joe and Artie pursue him to try to bring him home - that we come to understand the depth of how fully Joe has failed Harry as a father and what it will take for them to start over.
The Boys Are Back is an affecting and lyrical movie that moves at its own pace, set against the beautiful landscape of South Australia. The filmmakers have admirably resisted the temptation to turn Carr's story into a screwball comedy of fatherhood, or a feel-good film about one man's transformation into Super-Dad. Instead, this is a film about a flawed man - and a flawed father - doing his best for his children. The character of Joe Warr can be criticized for much, but at his heart he is a man who loves his children. And nowhere is this better expressed in The Boys Are Back, than in the scene where Joe lies next to his son at bedtime, and reads to him from the book Peter Pan as he drifts off to asleep.