Once in awhile a really good movie comes out of Hollywood. I had seen this one before but I took time this morning to watch The Second Hand Lion one more time. It is pure fantasy but it is a story with a lot of good moral overtones and it will make you laugh. In case you have missed it, it is the story of two brothers and their grand nephew Walter.

His mother, a ne’er-do-well lady with a lifetime of bad decisions and a life that just had no room for the boy, leaves Walter with the uncles. The uncles had spent an adventurous lifetime as soldiers of fortune, first in the French Foreign Legion and then as freelance soldiers. Now they were retired, they had settled in an old house on a fairly large acreage and had a reputation for being wealthy eccentrics. They enforced their privacy with shotguns and told Walter the stories of their life in the deserts of Africa. In particular they told the story of Uncle Hub’s love and marriage to a beautiful Princess Jasmine, his true love, who had died with her baby in childbirth.

The other relatives, including Walter’s mother, were out to find the brother’s fortune and get their hands on it. Off to a rocky start the youngster gained the affection of his uncles and they gave him the home he had never had. But what a home it was … from his uncles’ fending off salesmen (most of whom they had called to show their wares) with blasts from their 12-gauge shotguns to the purchase of a lion for their own home-grown safari.

The old lioness became Walter’s pet and saved his life when his mother shows up with her new boyfriend who tries to force Walter to show him where the fortune is hidden. It was then that Walter made the choice to stay with the uncles. He grew up and finished his education under their care … and largely through his care of them. He made them promise to live with more regard for their safety until he was grown.

Free from their obligation, the uncles, now in their nineties, died in the crash of their homemade WW I biplane as they tried to fly it upside down through their barn door. They died with their boots on, the way they would have wanted to go.

Pure fantasy but a heartrending story that brought laughter and a tear to my eye more than once. It is the kind of movie that makes you feel good when it is over. There is a great love story with a bittersweet ending.

It is good to take time once in awhile to see a good movie or to read a good book. Too many of us stay too busy to enjoy a good laugh and a good story. A good laugh makes you feel so much better. It releases endorphins, they say, that do a lot for us, It is even said that laughter will make us live longer. As Reader’s Digest has told us in every issue for more years than I can remember, “Laughter is the best medicine.”

The Stamps-Baxter Quartet, a gospel singing group of 60 years ago, said it this way in song, “Give the world a smile each day. Help someone along life’s way. Let your life so be that all the world can see the joy of serving Jesus with a smile.”