Featured Film Review
90 minutesStarring: Bernard Hill, Charlotte Bradley
Director: John Irvin
Rating: R
Any movie with Colm Meaney and Bernard Hill is not likely to disappoint, and this is certainly a great film. Meaney and Hill play Jimmy and John Joe, brothers, fiddlers, competitors in an Irish Ceili competition. Jimmy (Meaney) has moved to Liverpool while John Joe has stayed on the family's land and leads a local ceili band. A third brother, Padjo played by Patrick Bergin in a funny and fitting cameo, is a priest and is on a mission in Africa. John Joe's local band includes Maisie (Charlotte Bradley) and her daughter, Anne (Andrea Corr). Folks in the village believe that Maisie is a widow and Anne's father had died before her birth. The truth of it is that Maisie never married and Anne's paternity becomes an issue when the festival brings Maisie face to face with her daughter's father. Anne becomes quite taken with a young Liverpudlian lad in Jimmy's band and her mother's fear that Anne will take after her and make the same mistakes threatens to tear mother and daughter apart. During this time the brothers are doing some strange and silly things in order to thwart each other, and the result is often hysterical. The music will make you want to dance and the web woven by the musicians, their stories, their lives, is a joy to watch.
For 90 minutes, you'll visit Ireland and will find, I think, it's a visit well worth making.
4.5 cauldrons only because I wanted to see more.
Reviewer: Cerr
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