The Boys Are Back

Boys will be boys, and, eventually, grown boys as opposed to men. That's the cheerful (depending on how you look at it) message of The Boys Are Back, in which Clive Owen pours on the not inconsiderable charm as a father suddenly left having to care for his two sons. That  women barely enter into the scenario - and when they do, emerge as so many killjoys - will appeal to the eternal adolescent in a movie that aims to make eternal roustabouts of us all. Let's face it:  wouldn't you rather sit on the bonnet of dad's very, very speedy car instead of - ugh! - doing the dishes?

The movie is breezily directed by Scott Hicks, the Australian filmmaker who led Geoffrey Rush to an Oscar for Shine, and by the credit roll Owen has acquired something of a sheen, as well. You might expect otherwise from a narrative that begins with the unexpected death of the wife of Owen's sports journalist Joe, who is no sooner kissing his beloved Katy (Laura Fraser) at a party before she is taken fatally ill. But the abiding love story on view is that of a heretofore absent father who, faced with tragedy, finds that he can be both mum and dad at once. You may resist the tugs at the heart that follow on cue, but I'd be surprised if you don't find yourself surrendering to the odd sniffle: the movie makes New Men of us all.

It also reveals a softer, gentler Owen than we are used to, suggesting as it does that the actor took advice on how to flash a million dollar smile from his Closer co-star, Julia Roberts. Perhaps the Australian locations did their bit, as well? Whatever the reason, you're ready to forgive Joe all manner of parental misadventure en route to the reconstitution of the family that it took an untimely death for him to get to know. Even his frosty mother-in-law, Barbara (Julia Blake), eventually joins in a collective thaw that puts the sweet back into "sweetheart" - the term of endearment that turns out to be Joe's favourite word.

Up until that point, there's not a whole lot to a narrative drawn from the 2001 memoir from British writer Simon Carr, whose "just say yes" policy toward fatherhood fuels Allan Cubitt's canny adaptation for the screen. It's a given that Joe at one crucial point will have to choose between work and home, thereby paving the way for a disaster that a reel or two are certainly capable of putting right. And one can equally be sure that so eligible an expat widower as Joe won't take long to attract fresh interest from the local Aussie women - in this case, Laura (Emma Booth), a relationship that in fact doesn't go entirely according to the preordained plan.

Hicks's skill with his actors makes the potentially pro forma material seem fresh, not least the shifting emotional geometry of a household that finds Joe and his younger son, Artie (Nicholas McAnulty), joined in their shared grief by the arrival from England of older child, Harry (George MacKay), a teenager whose determinedly sullen mien is given its own lift by life Down Under. Harry's growing importance to the story means that a second woman has to be killed off metaphorically, if not literally, in the person of his offputtingly cool mother, Flick (Natasha Little), who is Joe's first wife. She is history, we gather, as is England.

And you know what? You go with it just as cheerfully as little Artie takes to dad's runaway car. The Boys Are Back operates from the belief that life really can be a hard-won bubble bath. Who amongst us would want to throw cold water on that?

• The Boys Are Back goes on general release Friday