Directed by Scott Hicks

Clearly designed to bring a tear to the eye of every father of sons, this irritating tale of Jeremy Clarkson Man coping with his inner child at the same time as his actual children after his wife dies, failed to raise more than a inner, and occasionally actual, groan from me. Based on the book by Simon Carr, parliamentary sketch writer for the Independent, which is a collection of memories, thoughts and anecdotes about life for his family after the death of his wife, it's been fictionalised, moved to Australia, and given some contrived and unlikely plot devices.

Clive Owen is Joe Warr, a Limey working in Australia as chief sports writer for a top newspaper. When his perfect (beautiful, sexy, understanding , brave, intelligent) wife, Katy, dies, leaving him alone with their five-year-old son, he falls apart, discovering that dishes don't wash themselves, nor do dirty clothes, food doesn't buy itself, and being best mates with your child isn't always enough. This is the much rehearsed myth that women possess some mystery gene all to themselves that makes them take housework in their stride. Chaps, on the contrary, are naturally rubbish at that boring stuff but really good at the creative, fun things, exciting play and risk-taking, making them kinda lovable in their helplessness. Let me tell you, boys, it ain't so. We'd rather be playing scary games with torches in the dark than washing up, too.

Then we realise that Joe has another son, and an ex wife, living in the UK, and what's more this boy needs his father, now that Ex is having a new baby to husband no 2. Joe fetches him from the posh public school he's keeping him at (how much do sports writers earn in Oz, for goodness sake? Surely he could have afforded a cleaner, at least) and takes him back to Australia, where some awkward bonding goes on. Worst of all, the beautiful spirit of Katy keeps appearing to sooth Joe in extremis and offer useful advice. And help comes in the form of Laura, a single parent neighbour. She's a woman, so of course she's coping fine with the washing up etc, and even does Joe's for him. Fortunately the film baulks at whipping up a little romance here, and she's strong enough to rejects Joe's doe-eyed ‘help me' looks. When a ridiculous attempt to disguise the fact that he's stayed at home fathering instead of attending and reporting on an important tennis tournament in another city fails, (as if the nation's press corps would not notice the absence of a chief reporter from the press box and yet see his on the spot reports appearing every day in the paper...), Joe makes another dud decision and they all learn his lesson the hard way. Come on now, Joe is just a single parent, tricky dilemmas like this happen all the time to bereaved, abandoned and divorced men and women, most without the comfortable resources Joe has to hand.

In the end Joe might have learned a bit, but not much. The boys are back together (not that they ever were before), unlikely though elder son's preference for hot dusty anarchy to his teenage life with his mates back in England may be. Wipe away that tear, chaps. This is fantasy land, the male equivalent of a chickflick.

What does Simon Carr think of it, I wonder, if he recognises it as at all related to his work? Well, there's no knowing - Nick Hornby liked the film of Fever Pitch, after all. Men, eh?

Seen at Cinema Days, Empire Cinema, Rubery, Birmingham, 2 October 2009