Synopsis
For many years, four teenage orphans at an Australian outback convent have watched their younger comrades find new parents, and realize that they may never be adopted. The Reverend Mother sends the four boys away on a seaside vacation, where they meet Teresa and Fearless, a couple who would make perfect parents. The youths compete with one another to be the one Teresa and Fearless decide to adopt.
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Cast
- Daniel RadcliffeMaps
- Lee CormieMisty
- Christian ByersSparks
- James FraserSpit
- Jack ThompsonBandy
- Teresa PalmerLucy
- Sullivan StapletonFearless
- Victoria HillTeresa
- Max CullenNarrator / Adult Misty
- Kris McQuadeMrs. McAnsh
- 75
New York Post
Tasteful and gorgeously photographed coming-of-age story. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
This charming tale of a quartet of Australian orphans who share a life-altering holiday in the 1960s should appeal to sentimental adults old enough to wax nostalgic over their own adolescences. - 70
Los Angeles Times
A refreshingly gentle treatment of familiar themes such as the inevitability of change, the dashing of youthful illusions and mutability of family. Enhanced by an exotic locale, the movie overcomes a well-trodden narrative path and unflinchingly brandishes its sentimentality as it stakes out its crowd-pleasing territory. - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
The film's dramatic moments are small but exquisitely rendered so that you feel the emotions experienced so many years ago. The film lingers afterward in your mind like a favorite vacation that triggered moments of sheer intensity. - 67
Entertainment Weekly
The filmmakers can't decide whether to trust the period innocence of the book (and play down their casting coup) or let the young man rip as a preteen-babe magnet... So December Boys splits the difference -- safely, dully. - 67
The A.V. Club
For much of its duration, December is poignantly bittersweet, but the closing sugar rush washes its pleasing ambiguities away. - 60
Empire
More Sunday afternoon filler than cinema sensation, it’s a perfectly pleasant drama, but you’ll struggle to remember it the next day. - 60
Variety
Occasionally touching but rarely convincing coming-of-ager.