"December Boys," based on a 1961 young-adult novel by
Michael Noonan and shot in director Rodney K. Hardy's ("Battlestar Galactica")
homeland of Australia, follows four boys admitted to the St. Gregory orphanage
in the Australian outback who share a December birthday — thus the eponymous
title. As is necessary with these kinds of adolescent stories, each boy has a
characteristic nickname — for example, the oldest boy, Maps, played by Daniel
Radcliffe of "Harry Potter" fame, has
a birthmark distinctly resembling a map. The narrator — now a grown,
baritone-voiced man reminiscing on the past — says his name is "
me 'Misty' — no need to go into that now."
Indeed, before the audience even gets a bearing on who
exactly the four young protagonists are, the boys are promptly sent away,
without explanation, on an extended vacation in "a special place on the sea."
It is here the movie really begins, where the children are cared for by an old
couple who serve as surrogate grandparents.
A highlight of "December Boys" is its sweeping cinematography.
Shot on location at a small tourist destination called Kangaroo
their island home against clear blue skies, the camera lingering on the alien,
surreal namesake formations at Remarkable Rocks in
of this natural beauty, however, is the horribly overbearing soundtrack, which
telegraphs at every turn the exact emotion the audience should be experiencing.
Once on the island, the boys meet Teresa (Victoria Hill,
"Macbeth"), who Misty can only compare to the Virgin Mary, upon first glimpsing
her wading topless. Teresa is followed shortly by her husband Fearless (played
by Sullivan Stapleton and pronounced throughout the movie as "Phyllis"), a
stunt motorcyclist at the nearby circus. Almost immediately, Misty starts
lobbying to be adopted as their son. Meanwhile, Maps begins a tentative, covert
relationship with Fearless' niece, Lucy, impishly played by Teresa Palmer ("The
Grudge 2"). This rather straightforward plot is filled out with various quirky
side stories and details: a crotchety fisherman obsessed with a fish named
"Henry," a horse that fishes, a suffering priest broiling in a car serving as a
makeshift confessional and Misty's intermittent, jarring religious visions. The
two other boys, meanwhile, are never given much screen time and are utterly
forgettable as interchangeable sidemen. You might think the DVD would throw
them a bone with an extra scene or two, but unless you like senile fisherman
and all their permutations, the single extra — a 5-minute highlight reel of
deleted scenes — is not worth checking out.
It's hard to figure out whom exactly this movie is intended
for. It delights in the things 13-year-old boys are passionate about — lingerie
magazines, motorcycles, smoking and swiping the adults' alcohol — treating subject
matter with a gleeful lack of sophistication. At the same time, however, there
are no real adventures to be found here, the movie instead turning on a human
drama too slow for teenage boys to pay attention to. The cloying, wholesome sentiment
and prevailing religious subject matter throughout the movie shares in this
contradiction.
However, it's precisely due to the piecemeal fit of all
these elements that the movie ultimately succeeds. Radcliffe and Palmer have
real chemistry with each other as their youthful romance (set in a cave, no
less) progresses to its logical conclusions. Sure, Maps eventually spirals into
a melodramatic funk that is absurdly reconciled by an act of heroism too easily
won, the end result of all of Teresa and Fearless' adoption nonsense is frankly
unbelievable, the final scene where the gang meets one more time to gaze down
the Cliffside completely unnecessary — in fact, the entire last 20 minutes or
so of the movie is pretty dismal. Despite all this, all the flaws in the movie
fall away when they are considered as a whole.
3 stars out of 5
