Secondhand Lions

A Movie Review

“So dad, you mean those guys really lived?”

“Yes, they really lived.”

That’s how the 2003 film Secondhand Lions ends. I won’t ruin the whole story, but it’s about Walter—a boy who doesn’t have a dad and obviously needs one. He gets dumped at his mother’s uncles’ (plural) house for the summer because she simply has other things going on.

Most of the movie is about the adventures Walter has during that summer and the lessons he learns from his crusty and eccentric uncles. “What do you mean you don’t have a TV?”

There are boys like Walter all over the place. They don’t have a dad or they have a dad but were never taught to be a man. Some of them need to hear Hub’s (Robert Duval) “What every young man needs to hear before becoming a man” speech. Many of them just need someone like Garth (Michael Caine) to teach them how to do dumb stuff and survive. But all of these boys need the kinds of things these uncles give to Walter: guns, farming, fishing, and old men—that is, boys need men who really lived.