December Boys (12A)

Quite the most pretentious piffle I've seen all year. Daniel Radcliffe puts aside the specs and broomstick to star in this small-scale independent drama about a quartet of Catholic orphan boys holidaying in an Australian beach cove one 1960s summer.

Golden sunsets, religious epiphanies and adolescent crushes aren't enough to quicken the pedestrian pace, and the writing is weedy and banal. At the smallest hint of drama, Marc Rosenberg's script seems to drop dead in fright. As for Radcliffe, he nails the accent but not much else, his moon face blankly uncommunicative and body language little better.