The Boys Are Back

Based on the best-selling novel by journalist Simon Carr, The Boys Are Back is an emotional rollercoaster-ride about a man's personal loss and the subsequent grief that follows. Add the fact that it's also about a single dad's struggle to bring up his two boys and one can see why both novel and movie might strike a few chords with readers and cinema audiences alike.

Back in 1994, Carr's wife Susie had succumbed to cancer and suddenly, Carr had not only become a widower but a single dad - clueless as to raise his boys all by himself. Committing every mistake in the book, his often hapless attempts as a DIY-dad prompted him to pen his memoirs in 2001. Such was the success of the book that Peter Bennett-Jones, chairman of Tiger Aspect Pictures, contacted Carr to let him know his book would make for a terrific film.

Once screenwriter Allan Cubitt (Anna Karenina, The Hanging Gale) as well as Australian director Scott Hicks (Shine) got drafted in, the project began in earnest. Cubitt made minor changes in the script. For example, Carr become Joe Warr and his story takes place in Australia (as opposed to New Zealand).
Finding an actor able to pull off the emotional range required for the part of Carr/Warr was not an easy task. Director Hicks' choice fell to Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee Clive Owen (who is also one of the film's executive producers). The biggest challenge, however, was to find the actors playing Warr's two young sons - six-year old Arnie and teen-aged Harry (Warr's son from a previous marriage). Young Nicholas McAnulty, who simply shines beside Owen, brilliantly plays Arnie. It's perhaps down to the fact that Nicholas is not a child actor that his 'acting' comes across as utterly uninhibited and realistic. In the role of Harry we see George McKay (Defiance), who is just as natural as the 'lost' son and whose arrival becomes a catalyst for his dad's quest to reunite the boys.

While the based-on-true-events story has enough material to drift into tearjerker-territory, it thankfully never does! Instead, we get to see bravura performances from all the cast, including Emma Booth as a single-mum neighbour. The film delivers the right balance of sadness, tragicomedy as well as deadpan sense of humour. Above all, it delivers the message that life goes on and gets better again no matter how bleak it seems at the time.