Here’s a lovely movie which brings together many things.

An Irish film.

Directed by Conor McPherson.

Wherein Dylan Moran gets to assume a sort of Peter Sellers breadth.

English, Irish, Scottish.

Accents.

Well done.

And bloody fucking funny.

The best is the Scot.

Where Moran describes himself in apoplectic circumcision as “bordering on genius”.

To dissect:  Moran (an actor) playing an actor (!) who is then further acting (playing a Scot in a real-life scenario rather than on stage).

I’m not sure how confusing that is.

An Irish actor (Moran) playing the role of an Irish actor (a character in this film) is really not that farfetched.

But you see how circuitous this film is.

Yes, Dylan Moran is the best thing here.

You might know him from Black Books, but he is much better here.

Michael Caine is quite good here.

And Lena Headley is a nice foil to all this nerdy testosterone.

But Michael Gambon really steals the show from Caine.

Gambon who, like Moran, is also Irish really gives this picture the color it needed.

The bathos.

The absurdity.

The contrition.

The strangest star is Abigail Iversen who comes off as a sort of Greta Thunberg savant.

She was a dead ringer for the prodigy.

Strangely, Iversen (who is Icelandic) seems to have dropped off the map in 2003 after this film and one other.

Sure, perhaps this film is no masterpiece, but it is a lot better than the gobs of shite currently mucking up most of the Internet.

 

-PD