Movie review: 'December Boys'

2 stars (out of four)

“December Boys” is a modest, tender-hearted coming-of-age tale that would probably come and go without much notice.

Except, that is, for an actor playing one of four orphaned teen boys at the heart of the story: Daniel Radcliffe, a.k.a. Harry Potter.

This sweet, sometimes cloying saga, based on a 1963 novel by Michael Noonan, recalls wholesome, bygone Disney live-action films, albeit with a little more sex. It tells of orphans at a Catholic home in 1960s Australia who are rewarded with a trip and extended stay at the seaside, thanks to an aging couple inspired to play brief benefactors.

The lads, including Radcliffe’s character, Maps, the eldest, soon discover that the odd, remote little neighborhood of residents by the sea might be up to adopting one of the four juvenile visitors. Suddenly, the competition is on, threatening to tear apart the foursome’s close-knit, ad hoc family fabric. Maps’ sexual initiation, thanks to a slightly older female member of the shoreline colony, is one of the outing’s handful of adventures.

Radcliffe’s decidedly un-Potter-like portrayal pleasingly turns out to be vulnerable, realistic and edgy. His Maps is an instantly recognizable teenager, timid, insecure, uncertain about spreading his wings while on the brink of doing just that. Radcliffe manages believable self-doubt and a kind of smoldering charm waiting to burst forth.

But the movie stalls and stumbles quite a bit, too, devolving into bathos and bad memoir. The sweet-natured wife of the benevolent couple turns out to be dying of cancer. A crusty, ill-tempered elderly man seems to have his own, weird “Moby Dick”-like war going on with a powerful old fish that swims in the colony’s inlet, a wrestling match the boys inevitably invade. Thus, the boys confront fable-like and actual death simultaneously, a bit too neatly.

Even the interesting images of the remote Australian coastline are undercut somewhat by such characters as a younger couple associated with a nearby carnival—a transparent bit of symbolism pitting pristine nature against tawdry adult commerce. Wouldn’t you know—fairground lights and tinsel gloss over a honky-tonk reality, another summer lesson.

Fantasy sequences, including one scene of nuns cartwheeling on the beach, don’t help, nor does the bittersweet ending, which feels contrived and unbelievable, however much it may stem from actual autobiography.

Director Ron Hardy manages respectable restraint, helped by a solid cast, including Lee Cormie as Misty, the character/narrator more pivotal than Maps.

As a result, “December Boys” is more touching than it might be otherwise. Juvenile viewers may well benefit from the movie. But, for the adult, it’s ultimately a film that arrives too early for the season in its title and too late in terms of style and impact.

sissmith@tribune.com