Possibly no actor working in movies today looks better in rumpled cotton than Clive Owen. George Clooney gives him a run for his money, but from Closer, Derailed and his series of BMW shorts all the way through to Children of Men, The International and Duplicity, the sheer volume of screen material featuring Owen looking fashionably weary and rundown helps make this slice of cut-rate domestic fatigue seem a bore by comparison. Owen’s trademark tousled charm carries stretches of The Boys Are Back, a too-loose widower’s tale, but otherwise overly familiar dramatic plotting elicits lukewarm positive feelings at best.

Owen plays sportswriter Joe Warr, who, in the wake of his wife’s tragic death, finds himself suddenly thrust into single parenthood. Baffled and overwhelmed, Joe embraces instinctual exuberance, trying to chase down some sort of a return to normalcy by simply saying yes to everything. This works for a while with six year-old Artie (Nicholas McAnulty). But when Joe invites Harry (George MacKay), his teenage son from a previous marriage, to fly in from England and stay with them, the household’s unabashed lack of rules prove problematic for all involved, including a young single mother (Emma Booth, sort of an Aussie Gretchen Mol) whom Joe is circling, seemingly as much for free childcare as romance.

Australian director Scott Hicks, who burst onto the scene with 1996’s Oscar-winning Shine, returns to film his homeland for the first time since that movie, but can’t achieve satisfying emotional liftoff. It’s both a bit of a surprise and somehow not shocking at all to learn that the film is based on a 2001 memoir by Simon Carr, since The Boys Are Back feels rigidly constructed to hit every potential beat of conflict, from general emotional withdrawal and friction with the in-laws to a poor decision to leave the kids home alone.

The story meanders to and fro, and could have used much more connective tissue between the two boys, which would have made the come-stay-with-us connection that the movie eventually sells as Joe’s younger son feeling for Harry that much more believable. The stunning South Australian countryside, as captured by Hicks and cinematographer Greig Fraser, gives The Boys Are Back an achingly convincing sense of place, and the acting is OK, certainly. But the small moments of heartbreak arrive with such infrequency as to leave one daydreaming of a Vegemite sandwich. (Miramax, 100 minutes, PG-13)