The Boys Are Back Critic Reviews

Tidily arranges its raw feelings about fathering and manhood into a decent, intelligent melodrama meant to soothe audiences and provoke no one.Read the full review

Clive Owen can be a likable actor, but the character is working against him...And please, please, give us a break from the scenes where the ghost of the departed turns up and starts talking as if she's not dead.Read the full review

With those piercing eyes, Owen makes a lovely, soulful Joe, of course. But it's not the nice papa we want to understand here, it's the unapologetically naughty one.Read the full review

The Boys Are Back is a bit like the parenting it portrays -- at times there is pain, mistakes will be made, but if you can get beyond that, there is pleasure to be found.Read the full review

Hicks has made a technically adept film, but one that, for all of its strong acting and vivid photography, left me less moved than I should have been.Read the full review

Owen, in a heartfelt, award-caliber performance, never goes soft. It's his core of toughness that makes the movie so funny, touching and vital.Read the full review

Owen is a magnetic, sensitive presence at the center of a movie that doesn't deserve him and that barely deserves to be seen.Read the full review

Few films have so poignantly portrayed a father's relationships with his sons as The Boys Are Back.Read the full review

Has a burnished, high-quality look and a heart swollen with maudlin self-regard.Read the full review