40
If Daniel Radcliffe is hoping for an acting life after Harry Potter, he might want to be choosier than this cloying little Australian number.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
40
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
A coming-of-age tale so treacly it doesn’t just tug your heartstrings, it attempts to glue them to your ribs.
75
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 by Kevin Crust
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 by Kirk Honeycutt
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 by Lisa Schwarzbaum
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.
75
Tasteful and gorgeously photographed coming-of-age story.
67
For much of its duration, December is poignantly bittersweet, but the closing sugar rush washes its pleasing ambiguities away.