Hey, Everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

There's a lot that can be said about this tale of four orphaned Australian boys growing up in the 1960s, but let's be honest: this film is only getting attention (and a release date, for that matter) is because DECEMBER BOYS marks Daniel Ratcliffe's first non-Harry Potter film appearance since the series began. Ratcliffe isn't really the star of this film, but he is a part of a fairly somber ensemble cast that conveys a certain sense of wonderment as the orphans get the rare opportunity to spend a Christmas holiday away from the Catholic-run orphanage, vacationing in a sleepy seaside community. I know, I know, the minute you hear "Catholic-run orphanage," you're butt checks clench. But there's no funny business here with the film's only priest character, but it might have made things more interesting if there had been.

This is a film that never explicitly requires us to feel pity on these four young boys (with Ratcliffe playing the oldest, and therefore least adoptable, of the group), but that doesn't mean that the film doesn't take every opportunity to yank at the old heartstrings ever so slightly. Much of the film is exceedingly pleasant and easy to slip into comfortably, as we get to know the kids, their host family (an older childless couple who run their home like a ship), and the neighbors, including the attractive young couple that many of the boys see as possible adoptive parents. The film's only real drama comes from the four boys trying to outdo each other as they kiss up to the young couple and win support for a cause they have essentially made up in their own minds. Probably the movie's most difficult scenes are those in which the boys let slip to us just how much they want to be a part of a real family. Ratcliffe's character, Maps, pretends he's just counting the minutes until he is released from the orphanage, but we know his dreams are the same as the younger boys.

Of course Maps has a whole other set of events in his life to keep him distracted, namely a flirtatious young vixen who seems to want to show him what being a man is all about. That's right, folks, Harry Potter loses his onscreen virginity right here! But even that milestone is fraught with pain and heartache. DECEMBER BOYS (as the group of boys is named, since they all have their birthdays in said month) is a harmless, though not particularly challenging, work that does an competent job generating some emotional response on ideas about friendship, loyalty, family, honesty and young love. The coda to the film is a bit ludicrous and unnecessary (and I'm pretty sure the ages of the boys don't exactly work out as a brief flash-forward shows them as decrepit old men).

If anything the movie's low-key approach to this material might be too snooze-inducing for some tastes. Ratcliffe spends most of the film either being tongue tied or moody, so we don't really get a sense of his non-Potter acting skills. The film also piles on a few too many mystical elements, including a magic fish(!) and a sexy French woman (OK, she's not technically mystical, but her presence in this town seems about as likely as a magic fish). Director Rod Hardy (who has done mostly TV directing in his 30-plus-year career, including several episodes of the new "Battlestar Galactica") working from a novel by Michael Noonan does a great job familiarizing his audience with the serene landscape of this part of Australia and keeping his young actors from becoming smarmy little bastards. I admired his ability to make us care about these characters by treating them like people and not simply generic renditions of "kids." I'm not sure another filmmaker could have done anything more or better with DECEMBER BOYS. The material is a bit thin from the get-go, so what we're left with feels familiar and mildly uninspired.

Capone