Publication Date: 02-16-2026

Secondhand Lions (2003) review

Dir. Tim McCanlies

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★½

Remembering Robert Duvall

1931 – 2026

“You must be pretty damn hard-up for fun to want to come over here and spend a week drinking coffee and watching TV,” my grandpa would always tell me at some point during the annual week I would spend with him and my grandmother. Little did he know, what he mentioned was part of the appeal. For about five or six years, during middle school and high school, I’d take approximately five-to-seven days to unplug from my “normal” life and shack up at my grandparents. I didn’t have any agenda in mind. Usually, the biggest trip we took during the week was to the local flea market bright-and-early on a Sunday morning. Those memories, however unremarkable they may seem, are some of the most formidable of my teenage years.

Secondhand Lions harbors that kind of spirit. It tells the precious parable about a teenage boy that practically gets abandoned by his mother and left in the care of his two geezer uncles. The boy is the all-grown up Haley Joel Osment from The Sixth Sense, and the two geezers are some of the most iconic American actors who ever lift. I doubt they need a proper introduction.

Osment is Walter, a shy, wimpy, lanky teen who isn’t lazy as much as he is uninspired. His mother hasn’t taught him anything about being a man and she usually favors lackluster boyfriends over him. Walter arrives at his Uncle’s farm where Hub (Robert Duvall) and Garth (Michael Caine) greet him coldly. Walter is amazed that they lack the “essentials” for living in today’s world like a telephone and a television but quickly forgets about them when the uncles tele-story.

Hub and Garth tell Walter a story about how they were shanghaied in France and taken to Africa where they were forced to fight in a brutal war. Garth tells about how Hub found true love in a woman named Jasmine (Emmanuelle Vaugier). Jasmine is forced to marry a powerful Sheik, but upon Hub rescuing her from him, a bounty is placed on his head. Following a setup, Hub and the Sheik duel and afterwards they make a deal which results in Hub and Garth becoming practically millionaires.

In the present day, both men still occupy such a large amount of money that they are often the target for money hungry salesman that come by frequently looking for a quick buck. Hub and Garth’s response? Shooting warning shots at them until they leave the premises. This provides much comic relief which is welcomed rather than contrived.

Osment is illuminating, and the two uncles are enigmatic in the way they speak and act. Every boy should have the experience Walter had, but the problem stems from the fact that this story is heavily fictitious, and it’s a doubt anything like this stems outside in the world today.

Secondhand Lions is some sort of a miracle. It’s a children’s movie that proves to parents that good ones still exist. My question is plain and simple; why don’t parents take their children to see Secondhand Lions instead of something like Big Daddy or Good Boy!? This teaches lessons. The other films teach hardly anything. Which is why to find a truly inspiring family film you have to dig deeper than any other great film of any genre.

Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Robert Duvall, Michael Caine, and Kyra Sedgwick. Directed by: Tim McCanlies.