Secondhand Lions is a wonderful sentimental comedy. This story of a boy who is dumped for the summer on an isolated farm with his great-uncles, a couple of antisocial old bachelors, is full of wonderful characters and a few solid truths that take on new life when seen through the lens of this story.

The only flaw is in the adventure scenes, which are shown as one of the old coots tells the boy stories about the old men’s past in Africa.

These scenes are played lightly, for laughs, as if we were seeing them as the exaggerated tales of an old man. Which is all right, but a much better choice would have been to play them the way the young boy would have heard them – as powerful true stories with real danger and darkness.

It doesn’t spoil the movie – it simply makes it a little less than it could have been.

And I do wish a few scenes from the original script had not been cut. The scene where we find out why so many salesmen keep calling, for instance, enriched the relationships and is sorely missed. But I’m sure someone had a reason for cutting it. Maybe we’ll get to see it on the DVD.

Meanwhile, this film is a breakthrough for two people. For writer-director Tim McCandlies, this is his first shot at directing a high-profile feature. (He directed the independent film Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 a few years ago.)

He refused to let anyone film Secondhand Lions until he could direct it himself, and he did a good job. (Though the danger of directing your own script is that you don’t get the benefit of someone else’s ideas. Who knows but what another director might have seen a different, and better, way to treat those adventure scenes?)

The other breakthrough was for Haley Joel Osment . Playing a teen role instead of a child role is a huge breakthrough. What male actor besides Brandon De Wilde ever made that transition? And Osment does a terrific job.

However, like Claire Danes, Osment still relies too much on the free-flowing tears that made him such a powerful child actor. Not that he ever overdid it – it’s just that he resorted to tears in a couple of scenes too many. It would have been better if his character had not cried so easily, so that when tears finally came, it felt like a breakthrough had been made. Or perhaps he could have been played as a kid who cried easily, who learns to toughen up a little and be as “manly” as his uncles.

But my guess is that this was a directing problem, not an acting problem – that Osment is still young enough to play the scene as he is asked to, rather than envisioning his own part from the outside, the way adult actors learn to do. And the director was so dazzled by Osment’s ability to make strong emotions absolutely real that he never realized the weakening effect of its overuse.

All minor quibbles. It’s a terrific movie for all but those who are too young to let other people see them be moved by stories of good people doing good. In other words, I don’t see this as a teen date movie, and while young kids enjoy it, it doesn’t thrill them. I guess it’s a film for grownups who love and honor people who protect children and go out of their way to bring them happiness.

**Many thanks to FAIR for this article.