Cinema: Avuncular Tyke

The Uncle. Boys will be boys wherever they grow, so it must have seemed quite feasible to coax a thin-skinned British movie from Margaret Abrams' young-in-heart novel about a seven-year-old Texan named Gus. Transported to an English setting and played with luminous sensitivity by young Robert Duncan, who has the face of a Dickensian waif, Gus hotly resents the presence of Tom, a nephew his own age. He cannot understand why his Mum and Dad are Tom's grandparents, why his own father is sluggish and old while Tom's is the roughhousing playmate who...