December Boys is a coming-of-age fable featuring adorable ragamuffin orphans who dream of life outside their orphanage and yyhuglyufgkl. Oh dear, you’ll have to excuse me. I must have dozed off over my keyboard.
This twee muddle from Australia seems hellbent on taking every conceivable product from the rites-of-passage supermarket shelf. Four motherless children, growing up among jolly nuns and priests in a charitable establishment in the outback, are treated to a seaside holiday on what looks to be Fantasy Island without the entertaining presence of Ricardo Montalbán. Here, where a hoary old fisherman does his best impersonation of the Sea Captain from The Simpsons, they undergo as many coming-of-age rituals as you can think off. The one who most closely resembles the Milky Bar kid dreams of being adopted by the glamorous circus couple next door. Daniel Radcliffe, in his first proper muggle role, loses his head for the local floozy. The Other Two, an ill-defined mini-gang, mill around to no great effect.
Confusingly, December Boys appears to be set during the fifties, yet Creedence blares from the anachronistic soundtrack. The film is bookended by elderly gentlemen returning to the spot where they spent One Wonderful Summer, when by rights, the protagonists and his chums would scarcely be fifty. Even worse, Harry Potter looks old enough to adopt himself. Hmm. We might be able to ignore such infidelities if the film wasn’t so dreadfully humdrum. But it is. So that’s that then.