December Boys

Based on a novel by Michael Noonan, December Boys is a coming-of-age story with the added themes of friendship, bonding and the need to belong. I approached it with great anticipation because it featured the first peformance by young Radcliffe outside of his famed Harry Potter lead role. He proves that he can play someone other than the boy wizard although this role also has an earnestness that is not dissimilar to that of Harry and we don’t really get a vastly different style of character.

The film calls for the boys to go to a fictional place called The Cove, so a combination of places including Kangaroo Island and other South Australian beach areas are used to create a very lovely isolated area which any young boys would find thrilling. Cinematographically the film looks good.

I really wanted to love this film but it has a somewhat old-fashioned and rather contrived feel, which is set in train by the opening voice-over which declares “We were going to a world where anything was possible”. This rather cloying feel is continued in many of the scenes which simply try too hard to be impressive and give the feeling of being very self-consciously “arty”. For example, one shot has the four boys walking along the beach in order of height, Bandy is leading them playing a harmonica, they are all silhouetted against a spectacular sunset and a black horse brings up the rear. There are other moments where the boys have visions, be it of the nuns in their imaginations or even the Virgin Mary, and something in these scenes just doesn’t work and they seem somehow intrusive. There is a character, an old eccentric fisherman, who spends his days trying to catch a giant fish called Henry. Everything to do with this character is unfortunately predictable, and overplayed.

All that negativity aside, the boys act well and create a nice easy sense of camaraderie among themselves. Aussie legend Thompson has a role that allows him to use his comedic talents as well as show a bit of emotion, while Hill is very good as the sexy Teresa who the boys first see coming topless out of the water in a delightful scene that captures the essence of every adolescent’s wet dream! Young Palmer (recently seen in 2:37) as the teen love interest promises to be a future spunky talent, but the scripting of the scenes between her and Maps didn’t feel quite real to me, but hey, maybe I’m just totally out of touch with adolescent young love! Even so, I’ve got to find fault with them finding a useable record player in a cave that obviously didn’t have any power points!

There’s an epilogue to this film that seemed like a rerun of Last Orders and the needle on the schmalzometer does go a little high at the end. Not knowing the source material perhaps the film is a true reflection of that or perhaps it just lets itself get too carried away with nostalgia.

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