Secondhand Lions is a movie that, to quote cliché reviews, is fun for the whole family. It tells the story of a young boy named Walter who is abandoned by his floozy mother to live with his eccentric great-uncles, a pair of brothers named Hub and Garth. It was released in 2003, written and directed by Tim McCanlies (Secondhand Lions, 2003), starring Oscar Nominee Haley Joel Osmet (Haley Joel Osmet), Oscar Winner Michael Caine (Michael Caine (I)), Oscar Winner Robert Duvall (Robert Duvall), and Golden Globe and Emmy winner Kyra Sedgwick (Kyra Sedgwick). This brilliant movie is both comedic and serious, with wonderful actors and settings that tell a poignant story. Walter’s story begins when his mother abandons him with Hub and Garth. They are initially displeased with being …show more content…
What makes Secondhand Lions such fun is the comedy used throughout. Starting with when Walter first arrives at his Uncles’ house to the end of the movie where they manage to crash a plane, upside down, in the side of a barn. When Walter first arrives at the beginning of the movie he quickly realizes that his uncles do not approve of visitors and have no idea how to take care of a child. They even go so far as to warn him that they don’t know anything about kids and if there is something he needs he will have to find it himself or learn to do without, and if they “kick off in the middle of the night” (McCanlies, 2003), he’s on his own. The only other people Walter meets while living with his uncles are the various traveling salesmen that his uncles see as their personal form of entertainment, shooting their shotguns at them to see how quickly they will run away, distant cousins who want Hub and Garth’s money (part of the reason they tell Walter they want to keep him around when he attempts to run away to find him mother is that the other relatives will hate it), and greasers that Hub resoundingly beats up once he breaks out of the hospital after a heart