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Actors don’t come much edgier than Clive Owen.

In Croupier, Sin City, Inside Man, Children of Men, The International, Duplicity, and especially The Closer — for which he was Oscar-nominated — Owen’s edge was front and center. That’s part of the reason he was in the running as the new James Bond.

In The Boys Are Back, he tucks the edge away without entirely abandoning it, showing a somewhat softer and more outwardly charming side. But his brooding countenance remains on display.

TBAB is a family comedy-drama inspired by a true story. Its opening image, a dad driving along the beach at top speed as his young son perches dangerously on the hood of the car, proves to be a metaphor for the whole film — and we react to it as we will to what follows.

Owen plays a grieving widower trying in his own way to steer himself and his family back on track with what might be called “free-range fatherhood.”

He plays Joe Warr, a grief-stricken British sportswriter who moved to Australia with his second wife (Laura Fraser), but lost her to cancer. Her tragic death continues to devastate him and he frequently communes with her ghost.

His parenting style with his two sons — the six-year-old son (Nicholas McAnulty) of his late wife and a rebellious teenager (George MacKay) from a previous marriage who has come from England to live here for the summer — is now hands-on but Laissez-faire in the extreme: this is his way of filling the hole his late wife left behind and bringing joy back into their deeply saddened lives.

Their all-male household is like a chaotic fraternity house where disarray is the decorating style, playtime is anytime, the female influence of a house mother is nowhere to be found, and this permissive caregiver’s domestic philosophy is spelled out on the refrigerator with alphabet magnets: “Just Say Yes.”

It’s as if, because in their judgment the worst thing imaginable has already happened to this family, there’s no longer any reason to worry about consequences — an interesting viewpoint with which most parents would probably, in general, disagree.

The amount of freedom Joe gives his boys can look a lot like irresponsibility or recklessness to others in the community, such as the single-mom (Emma Booth) whom he starts dating and his mother-in-law (Julia Blake) — and, it should be noted, to us in the audience as well.

It’s certainly viewed in that light when, reluctantly, Joe leaves the boys home alone and goes off to cover the Australian Open. We know there will be repercussions and, indeed, there are.

Veteran director Scott Hicks (Shine, Snow Falling on Cedars, Hearts in Atlantis, No Reservations), working from an Allan Cubitt screenplay loosely based on Aussie journalist Simon Carr’s 2001 memoir, tells his story without resorting to too much in the way of heart-tugging.

But, as eminently watchable as leading man Owen is, as he shows us his character’s faults and weaknesses without squandering our rooting interest in him, our ambivalence about his character’s parenting style keeps us from giving ourselves over wholeheartedly to an otherwise admirable film about a family dealing with loss.

The Boys Are Back is a poignant fatherhood dramedy. Like Owen’s protagonist, it’s flawed. But, also like him, it’s compelling and worthwhile.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

104 minutes

In theaters October 9, 2009

Rating: PG-13, Drama

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The slogan that belongs on any T-shirt connected with Couples Retreat should read: “My cast and crew went to paradise and all they brought me back was this terrible comedy.”

Sitting through this dashed-off destination date-flick romp, it’s we who want to retreat.

Couples Retreat kicks off with marrieds Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell announcing to their friends that they are headed for divorce after eight seemingly happy years together. Their inability to have children has been a critical issue for them, so they’ve decided to go to the luxurious Eden Resort, on a tropical island in the South Pacific, to take advantage of the therapy sessions available there in an attempt to save their marriage.

Bateman guilt-trips his suburban Chicago buddies into accompanying him along with their significant others so they can get a reduced price. But it turns out that the couples therapy sessions offered as part of the group-rate vacation package are not optional, so all four couples have to participate. This comes as a blow because the others have come along assuming they’d just be swimming and water-skiing and snorkeling and dining and relaxing.

Not exactly. They’re booked into Eden West, which is exclusively for committed couples. As opposed to Eden East, which is for swinging singles, and which some of them watch longingly across the water.

That’s when three of the four couples at this seemingly paradiasical Bora getaway want to retreat. Too late. The New Age “couples whisperer” played by Jean Reno already has them in his clutches.

Vince Vaughn and Malin Ackerman are Dave and Ronnie, the central married couple and the busy parents of two young sons. Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis are Joey and Lucy, a married couple not so much estranged as alienated. And Faison Love and Kali Hawk are Shane and Trudy, he a recent divorcee, she a much younger woman he has just met and invited along.

The choppy and sloppy screenplay by producer Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, and Dana Fox takes forever to unfurl its convoluted premise, and then keeps introducing subplots and character back-stories that it has no intention of exploring in any way.

There’s room for raunch, slapstick, and raunchy slapstick within a PG-13-rated context, but legitimate laughs are in very short supply. That’s because everything is half-baked, as if the writers just ran with the first ideas that popped into their heads.

Nothing feels authentic, logical, or credible: not the marriages, not the therapy sessions, not the idiotic PowerPoint presentation that reels them all in, not even the leisurely resort activities.

Debuting director Peter Billingsley (whom you might remember as a child actor, playing protagonist Ralphie in the popular 1983 holiday perennial, A Christmas Story, and who has been a producer in recent years) doesn’t have much of a story to tell. So his film goes nowhere fast.

But he makes things worse by getting nothing from his cast, several of whom (Davis, Bell, Hawk) are embarrassingly inept in making an impression or creating a three-dimensional character. Even accomplished performers Vaughn, Bateman, and Reno come off badly. Of course, the atrocious screenplay doesn’t do them any favors.

Vaughn, wearing several behind-the-scenes hats, plays a more grown-up version of his signature character and does manage to get a few chuckles with his on-screen specialty: the machine-gun-dialogue tirade. But there’s not much else here that will reward your patience.

The disappointing doodle, Couples Retreat, is no vacation, vicarious or otherwise.

Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN

107 minutes

In theaters October 9, 2009

Rating: PG-13, Comedy

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