Waking Ned Devine: Movies on posthoc

A Sweet Slice of Irish Balarney

by Thomas Burchfield

One of the more tasty confections of the Holiday Season can be found in the new Irish comedy Waking Ned Devine, which opened this past weekend in Bay Area Theaters.

Hoping to bottle the same lightening that another transatlantic comedy The Full Monty did last year, this lighthearted and heady farce is set in the town of Tullymore, a tiny Irish village, population around 60, most of whom are old and all of whom are poor.

Two of the older and more raffish characters Jackie O'Shea, (Ian Bannen) and Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly), discover that one of their fellow villagers has scored the National Lottery. What do you do when you discover someone you know wins the lottery? Why you become their bestest of friends, that's what! But first you have to find who the winner is.

Via an amusing process of elimination, they discover the winner to be an old colleague of theirs, Ned Devine. The trouble is Ned has upped and died, killed by the shock of victory. After they discover Ned's cold corpse, still clutching the winning ticket, Jackie and Michael conjure up a scheme: Michael will pretend to be the late Mr. Devine when the Lottery Agent comes to the village to confirm and award the check. They rope the rest of the village into their scheme by promising to divide the nearly seven million pound check fairly and squarely with all of them if they unite to identify Michael as Ned.

It's bad luck when the Lottery Agent, seeking directions to Tullymore, stumbles on Jackie and Michael skinny dipping at the beach [Old guys in the nude: dig it!]. A funny sequence follows as Jackie misdirects the Agent to Ned Devine's cottage while Michael, nude but for a white helmet, frantically races them back to the cottage.

That sequence precisely defines the tone of this big-hearted film. Writer- director Kirk Jones does a fine job with this concoction of sweet Irish whimsy, which also bears a pleasing and distant resemblance to the comic capers of American writer Donald Westlake. Except Westlake's characters are rarely as touched with the luck of the Irish as this adorable band of picaresques. Jones directs the action with the precise sense of pacing and timing that farce requires, while simultaneously making it look as easy as a stroll down a country lane. Waking Ned Devine dances lightly along like a bright and easy Irish jig, though the ending fells too pat as thought it could use an extra plot twist or two.

Jones' dialogue is studded with gems of fine comic byplay: from Jackie conning his wife Annie (Fionnuala Flanagan) into thinking they're winning the lottery so she'll bring him a snack, to a little boy telling the parish priest he wouldn't want to become a priest himself because "I don't think I could work for someone I've never met and not get paid for it."

Bannen and Kelly as the two old scheming sods, have a superb and easy rapport reminiscent of the great comedy teams of the past. Whether they're stuffing Ned's false teeth back in his mouth, cheerfully skinny-dipping in the ocean, or sharing a bed together after Jackie is kicked out by his wife, the two actors work like they've been together all their long lives.

Also excellent is the great Irish actress Fionnuala Flanagan as Jackie's skeptical wife. She may get an Oscar nomination for her work here. The cast is nicely rounded out by James Nesbit and Susan Lynch as two lovers driven apart by the fact one of them lives the aromatic life of a pig farmer.

Waking Ned Devine is also a gorgeous looking and sounding movie. Composer Shaun Davey contributes an achingly beautiful and sweeping score, one of the best of the year, full of longing, joy and pipes a-calling. Henry Braham's cinematography richly contrasts the lowdown poverty with the rich mystical green beauty of the Irish countryside. . . . . .

. . except not one frame of Waking Ned Devine was shot in Ireland. Apparently, Ireland is so prosperous nowadays, the film makers couldn't scout up a village poor enough to portray Tullymore, so filmed it all on the Isle of Man. It's good to hear the Irish are doing well these days. With more films like Waiting for Ned Devine they can only do better.

[Thomas Burchfield can reached at TBDeluxe@aol.com and regularly appears on paper in Swing Time magazine.]

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