Here, the “Boys” just want to have fun. And that’s the problem. In Clive Owen’s engaging “The Boys Are Back,” from “Shine” director Scott Hicks, a recent widower and his sons have trouble facing their emotions. Until they are eventually forced to do that, they turn a remote Aussie homestead into a blokes-only clubhouse of filth and frolic.
Roughly based on the memoir “The Boys Are Back in Town” by Simon Carr, Allan Cubitt’s screenplay follows a British sports journalist living down under with his stunning young wife, Katy (Laura Fraser), and their precocious 6-year-old, Artie (played by irresistible Nicholas McAnulty). Within a few minutes of the start of the drama, Katy abruptly dies of cancer. In exasperation — and in defiance of his mother-in-law, unfairly demonized here — a bereft Joe Warr (Owen) quickly falls into the daredevil single parenting philosophy of “Just say yes.”
He not only lets the pizza boxes and dirty laundry pile up. As he buries his own grief with too much liquor and too little introspection, the permissive papa lets Artie run wild. He allows the small child to ride outside on the hood of the car, fly down a zipline without a spotter and leap into a shallow bathtub from a ledge.
Katy’s ghost pops up at pivotal points to guide Joe through this odd period of experimentation and bonding. Meanwhile, he begins to notice a possible new love interest, played by the ingenue Emma Booth. (Like the actress who plays Katy, she looks too youthful/immaculate to be a thoroughly believable match for the now-craggy Owen.)
Soon adding to the internal and external chaos, Joe’s teenage son from his first marriage arrives for an extended visit. Harry (George MacKay) is very British and repressed, secretly tortured by his father’s neglect over the years since his parents’ divorce.
Conflict ensues. But via an untamed environment and gleeful roughhousing, their shared sadness eventually allows the threesome to find some peace in each other.
The charming and convincing performances by the three leading men — especially fierce little scene-stealer McAnulty — compensate for a sometimes strained narrative. One subplot is particularly hard to buy. In order to set up an important plot turn, Joe commits an act of egregious journalistic fraud with little professional consequence. That sort of contrivance takes away from the “Boys’ ” general sweetness and poignant realism.
