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SECONDHAND LIONS (M-Net, 8pm) - Set in 1960s Texas, this is the story of a timid teenager, Walter (Haley Joel Osment), forced by his irresponsible mother to spend the summer with his eccentric (and recently rich) great-uncles (Michael Caine and Robert Duvall) on their farm.

Apart from the obvious pleasure of seeing Caine and Duval share screen time, Secondhand Lions also marks the transition of Osment from child actor to more meatier young adult roles.

Osment was catapulted to instant fame through his role in the 1999 film, The Sixth Sense, in which he played a young boy with the ability to see and communicate with the spirits of recently deceased people.

A string of less successful films have followed, notably Pay it Forward (2000) and Edges of the Lord (2001), and one bona fide hit, the 2001 futuristic thriller, AI: Artificial Intelligence.

With a few notable exceptions such as Drew Barrymore, not many child stars have been able to reinvent themselves as successful adult performers.

In fact, the kiddie fame playground is littered with has-beens and also-rans whose adult careers almost invariable end up in TV movie or, worse, commercial deadends.

Remember Macauley Culkin? Or Emmanuel Lewis of Webster?

Osment, however, has the potential to bridge the gap. He is, according to interviewers, intelligent and sensitive, and, perhaps most importantly, extremely level-headed about fame and celebrity.

Future roles, and the people he chooses to work with, will obviously be crucial over the next few years if he hopes to avoid the Macauley trap.

The good news is that Osment's next role definitely seems a step in the right direction.

In Home of the Giants, he plays a young journalist who covers a basketball team as it heads toward a state championship.

"It's important to find roles with characters growing up," Osment has been quoted as saying. "This is one of those characters that moves me along the timeline in my career."

Original Article in the South African Dispatch News Site