Category: Australian coming-of-age drama
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In what was Daniel Radcliffe's first major movie role away from the Harry Potter franchise, we get a story set in the 1960s about four boys on a holiday away from their Catholic orphanage who find themselves with lots of free time in a remote part of Australia and in the vicinity of two young and pretty women - what could possibly go wrong?
I initially wanted to watch this not so much because I appreciate Radcliffe's acting ability (though I definitely think he is good at what he does) but also because this movie was filmed in regional areas of South Australia - the state I grew up in - so I wanted to see how much I could recognise.
But let's run down the plot first.
The plot:
Maps, Misty, Spark and Spit (Daniel Radcliffe, Lee Cormie, Christian Byers and James Fraser) are four adolescent boys staying at a Catholic-run orphange in the middle of the South Australian outback and are grouped together by way of their birth month (hence the term December Boys). As a Christmas gift, the orphanage allows them a holiday getaway thanks to a kind benefactor who stays in a seaside shack at a remote place called Lone Star Cove.
The elderly couple, Bandy (Jack Thompson) and his wife, The Skipper (Kris McQuade) due to the nautical theme of their lifestyle, house and feed the boys in between all the times they explore the surrounding scenery. Also living in the cove are Fearless (Sullivan Stapleton) who performs motorbike stunts at the local carnival and his French wife, Teresa (Victoria Hill); an old salty named Shellback (Ralph Cotterill) who spends his days trying to catch the biggest fish in the cove, Henry; and up the hill are Watson (Paul Blackwell) and Lucy (Teresa Palmer) who run the generator that provides the cove with electricity.
Maps, the oldest of the four, develops a crush on Lucy, given they are both roughly the same age. The others are still relatively pre-pubescent.
The drama starts when Misty overhears Fearless talking with the other adults about the possibility of him and his wife adopting one of the December Boys, so in order to get in his prospective parents' good graces, Misty becomes a goody-two-shoes - dressing nicely, being overly polite, and preventing the others from watching Teresa getting undressed. The other three boys wonder what's up, and it's after a mobile confession session (because everyone is Catholic, remember!) that they force Misty to spit out why he's behaving so weirdly. This then causes Spark and Spit to also compete for attention from Fearless and Teresa, whereas Maps (infatuated with Lucy) seemingly resents the idea of adoption.
At Christmas, it comes out that Skipper is dying from breast cancer. It's also revealed that Fearless and his wife are not able to have their own children, as Fearless was performing a motorbike stunt with Teresa on the back and an accident rendered her infertile. Teresa is also upset that Fearless has made a decision on adoption without consulting her.
One night, Maps and Lucy get jiggy in the secret cave away from the cove. The next day, he goes back to the cave to find that Lucy has packed up and gone, having gone back to Darwin to see her dad. Maps also decides to go the carnival and finds out that Fearless isn't the motorbike stunt rider, but the shit-shoveler (presumably as a punishment for the accident). This causes tension between Fearless and Maps, but they have a discussion in the sex-cave that sets things straight (no sex involved).
Spark ends up catching Henry, causing Shellback to have an identity crisis.
But the height of drama comes when Misty is sitting out on the rocks and gets swept into the water, requiring Maps to get in and rescue him. While they are underwater, they both see a vision of The Virgin Mary until suddenly, they are both rescued and after which, they reconcile.
The boys are all called to Fearless' shack where Fearless and his wife announce that they want to adopt Misty, after which the other boys go outside to play while Misty and his adoptive parents stand on the porch. Misty begins to realise that the three boys are his family and he thus rejects the adoption offer.
In the closing scene set many decades into the future, an elderly Misty reads a letter from Maps stating that he became a priest and went to Africa to work with refugees, while Misty, Spit and Sparks throw Map's ashes and the ring he got from Lucy up into the air over the cove that they spent the summer in, but now with the shacks all removed, indicating that things have changed and moved on.
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The first thing I need to say - the scenery is fucking gorgeous. The location scouts did a great job of picking some choice spots in South Australia to film. But this ties in to one criticism I have - watching this, I was hoping to be reminded of my childhood in SA. But I wasn't. This movie could have been set in any English-speaking society that has Catholics and is surrounded by rocks and water. There's very little uniquely Australian (or even South Australian) about this, save for the accents of the characters and the humour.
There is also that little issue that book-to-movie adaptations struggle with, and writing this out, it strikes me as interesting how Radcliffe himself is at both ends of the spectrum on this. That issue is - how much of the source book do you put in a movie adaptation without slowing the movie down and making it feel like a trudge? If you go with absolutely everything in the source material, you end up with a bloated production - but if you cut things out, are you really faithful to the source material? With the Harry Potter series, the producers made very judicious decisions on what to include, what to leave out and what to amalgamate, such that the Harry Potter series is a very watchable adaptation of the books (though not entirely faithful). On the other hand, I don't think December Boys struck that balance because at times the story dragged.
The other pertinent question I had was - how much star power does Radcliffe bring? I have no doubt that attaching Radcliffe's name to the production drew interest (particularly mine), but would the movie have worked if there was another actor playing Radcliffe's role instead? While we'll never know, I'm going to go out on a limb and say no. Radcliffe apparently taught himself how to do an Australian accent, though there were a couple of times I thought he was about to yell "Wingardium Leviosa!".
But what I think of the movie itself? This movie was alright. Not brilliant - just alright. As I said, sometimes the story felt like it was dragging, and I suspect that it was because director Rod Hardy was trying to be faithful to the source material. The biggest problem this movie has is that it tries to tell ten different stories when in the end, only four of them really mattered.
As a slice of Australiana, it was interesting to see Catholics get some positive (or at least not negative) representation. Yes, the Catholics in this movie are staid and overly concerned with tradition and formality, but at least they're not impregnating women or chasing after young men (I'm looking at you, Bran Nue Day).
I think the words "book-to-movie adaptation" (whatever those words mean to you) really sum up the experience - it just feels like I'm watching a book play out. And I would not be surprised if this book is or becomes one of those that become curriculum material in much the same way Looking For Alibrandi or Cloud Street did.
STAR RATING: 3.25/5
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