What a depressing relic that, in 2014, even this deeply reactionary film had a pro-immigrant message for the Irish audience. Not a hope you'd get that today.
I think this fails on the basic level of satisfying its core audience, nowhere near as lewd as they would want. This should be Mrs Brown's European Vacation, not a deeply maudlin tax evasion treatise with the joke conception of a Transition Year film ("When Danny rides in on a horse, the Black Beauty music will play"/"When Rory runs on the beach, the Chariots of Fire music will play") and very little in the way of colourful gag set-pieces (bar O'Carroll horribly going Full Norbit as Mr Wang).
Ultimately, the film's bizarrely serious tone is not helped by the fact that this is just a really bad bunch of actors: O'Carroll delivering dialogue about how it felt as a woman putting children into care just feels wildly inappropriate, and Jennifer Gibney is remarkably stiff delivering her final rousing speech. There's actually a decent 5 minutes worth of Dublin footage you wouldn't normally get to see, especially in the Smithfield/Arran Quay area, but you can't even enjoy it for the godawful The Script and Ryan Sheridan music they keep playing.
Probably not the worst film ever made like I thought it was in 2014, just deeply ill-conceived and pointless.
What a depressing relic that, in 2014, even this deeply reactionary film had a pro-immigrant message for the Irish audience. Not a hope you'd get that today.
I think this fails on the basic level of satisfying its core audience, nowhere near as lewd as they would want. This should be Mrs Brown's European Vacation, not a deeply maudlin tax evasion treatise with the joke conception of a Transition Year film ("When Danny rides in on a horse, the Black Beauty music will play"/"When Rory runs on the beach, the Chariots of Fire music will play") and very little in the way of colourful gag set-pieces (bar O'Carroll horribly going Full Norbit as Mr Wang).
Ultimately, the film's bizarrely serious tone is not helped by the fact that this is just a really bad bunch of actors: O'Carroll delivering dialogue about how it felt as a woman putting children into care just feels wildly inappropriate, and Jennifer Gibney is remarkably stiff delivering her final rousing speech. There's actually a decent 5 minutes worth of Dublin footage you wouldn't normally get to see, especially in the Smithfield/Arran Quay area, but you can't even enjoy it for the godawful The Script and Ryan Sheridan music they keep playing.
Probably not the worst film ever made like I thought it was in 2014, just deeply ill-conceived and pointless.
