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Review of "Home of the Giants"

This is the type of movie that conjures the question "where does the time go?" Here is "I see dead people" Haley Joel Osment, all matured and high schoolish, when the last time we checked he was that spooky kid helping the ghost of Bruce Willis. They grow up so fast.

"Home of the Giants" features Osment as Robert "Gar" Garland, ace sports reporter for his Indiana high school and best friend of Matt (Ryan Merriman), the star player on the basketball team. Their friendship is tested when Matt's brother Keith (Kenneth Mitchell) re-appears after a stint in prison with a sure-thing plan for quick money. When the plan goes awry, forces work against Gar and Matt all the way up to and including the state championship game.

This is an obvious showcase for a transition film for Osment, to reintroduce him as a potential teen-to-young-adult heartthrob. His pairing with Merriman (doing his best Tom Cruise imitation from "Risky Business"), in this weak and improbable screenplay, allows Osment to flex some different acting muscles, but not much else.

Relationships are handled a little too simply in the story, as the two brothers have nothing to indicate why a prime high school athletic star would risk so much for seemingly so little. Gar and Matt also run contrary to circumstance, as highs and lows between them are handled too flatly, with no motivation to allow empathy or understanding.

I played Hoosier high school basketball, I know Hoosier high school basketball and its backdrop in this film had a cheap exploitative quality about it. The basketball sequences were well-cut, but they had a coldness about them usually associated with NBA highlights in the middle of winter. The excitement and the heat of a basketball-focused Hoosier community got lost in a blizzard of sports clips and cliches that could have emerged anywhere.

The cast sometimes rose above the material. Merriman pushed his Tom Crusian posturing to the limit, but did manage to do a little scene-stealing. Danielle Panabaker, as Osment's potential puppy love interest, had a premiere quality that reminded me of a young Julia Roberts or Anne Hathaway, a "look" that the camera loves and a distinctive style of performing.

But as a relationship film, it's not developed, and as a sports film it tries to score points without passion. I see dead movie.

*1/2 stars

Pat McDonald is a Chicago based film critic and writer. Read his reviews and articles at...

http://www.hollywoodchicago.com/
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