The Closer You Get: comedy.  Starring Ian Hart,  Niamh Cusack, Sean McGinley, Ewan Stewart, Sean McDoragh, Cathleen Bradley, Pat Shortt and Ruth McCabe.  Screenplay by William Ivory.  Directed by Aileen Ritchie. Rated PG-13. Now playing at Bay Area Theaters.

Welcome to Ireland where the men are venal, horny and stupid, the women are noble, earthy and wise and everyone’s just as cute as the dickens in the same way the rest of the world, including it seems, the Irish themselves, see them.

The Closer You Get is also from the producers of The Full Monty, who obviously are hoping lightening will strike twice. But judging from the somewhat tepid audience response at the screening, they’ll be lucky to get a rumble of distant thunder. (Then again maybe I’m in a snit over the “Women are from Venus, and Then There’s That Planet of Stupid Guys Who Fight A Lot” attitude the film takes.)

The story takes place in the isolated Northwest Irish seacoast village of Kilvara in Donegal.  For years the number of funerals has been rising while the number of weddings has plummeted to zero.  With the population shrinking, the village priest (Risteard Cooper) has been forced to semi-weekly screenings of old Hollywood religious epics just to get the bored population into church. But that’s the not the kind of excitement from the outside world they need.

After an accidental (and “cute”) screening at the church of 10 with Bo Derek, and a glimpse of a copy of Playboy, the young local male pubsters hit on an idea: place a singles ad in the Miami Herald inviting beautiful young American women (age range 20-21; these guys are nothing if not idealistic) to the village for their annual St. Martha’s Day fete.  Add to that a promise of subsequent marriage and voila!  All will be happy.

Once the women of the village, who are by no means an unattractive lot, get wind of this daft plan, all scheming hell breaks loose.  They make their own counter-invites to outsider males.  Tit follows tat and the men wind up as bereft of love as they were in the beginning. But, in the end, they unite for that old Dorothy from Kansas chant: there’s no place like home.

Lest I seem too cruel, The Closer You Get does have its pleasures, mostly in its performances by the lovely and winsome Niamh Cusack as Kate, wife of the two-timing pubmaster Pat (Ewan Stewart) and Sean McGinley as the storky middle-aged sheep farmer Ian who slowly realizes his love for Kate.  Both actors sensitively portray middle-aged people perilously and tentatively groping for love. McGinley is especially fine.  You can see his skin shivering with romantic excitement, his eyes glimmering with hope and darkening in fear.   Their romance in the film is the one union that could be honestly called touching and poignant, even if does end with one of those Hollywood “Miracle of the Heart” moments.

As for the rest Ian Hart as Kieran, Ian’s extremely dense and bollocks scratching younger brother, is amusing but unbelievable.  We never learn what Siobhan (Cathleen Bradley), his employee at his butcher shop sees in him and his obtuse manner towards her isn’t understandable either.  Pat Shortt as Ollie, a sweethearted oaf with an obsession for rubber machine implements, is very charming, but is forced to deliver an awful contrived speech of erotic passion when the village postmaster Mary (Ruth McCabe) confiscates some smut he’s mail-ordered from Amsterdam. 

Movies about stupid people on the loose can be an absolute delight (witness last year’s The Castle) but in The Closer You Get William Ivory’s screenplay draws big fault lines between the stupid and the smart.  In films like this one of the pleasures is the surprise in seeing how the "stupid" ones sometimes trip up the “smart”.  But here smartness triumphs throughout, giving the film an underlying and annoying smugness.  And it’s unbelievable.  You might reach the conclusion that it’s the women who ought to be on the bus out of town in search of adventure. If these are the men they want, they’re not much smarter  after all.

But not too worry.  Viewers may forget The Closer You Get soon enough. It doesn’t have the bright scheming zing of Waking Ned Devine nor the daft exuberance and inventiveness of The Full Monty. Even the Irish countryside, photographed by Robert Alazraki, is muddier-looking than it should be. The film is as tasty and memorable as boiled mash. A good example of a film that goes in one eye and out the other.