Secondhand Lions (2003)

 

What a pleasant surprise this was.  I had heard of the movie, I think, but I hadn't seen it until this past Sunday.  My loss, it's a really good little movie, and aside from being a coming of age film, it's also a great adventure flick.  The action scenes are really well done.  Tim McCanlies directed it, and he had written the excellent screenplay for the awesome The Iron Giant.  It stars Robert Duvall, Michael Caine and the not quite as cute as he was in The Sixth Sense Haley Joel Osment.  That happens to kid actors all the time.  He's quite good, though perhaps a little too enthusiastic on occasion here.

I don't know what I was doing in 2003, but I do wish I had seen this in the theaters.  It's a great date movie, or would have been.  It's a fun movie.