REVIEWED - THE BOYS (AND GIRL) FROM COUNTY CLARE: NAMED The Boys from County Clare on its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2003, and belatedly arriving here with an extended title, John Irvin's second Irish movie (after Widow's Peak) is set in the mid-1960s, as Beatlemania sweeps the world.
In Liverpool, hometown to the Fab Four, foul-mouthed building contractor Jimmy MacMahon (Colm Meaney) is still playing ceili music with his band at the Shamrock Club, just like his estranged brother John Joe (an oddly accented Bernard Hill) back home in rural Clare.
Matters come to a head when both brothers enter their bands for the All-Ireland Traditional Music Championships. There are further complications when John Joe's gorgeous fiddle player (Andrea Corr) falls for one of the lads in Jimmy's band, and even more when she discovers the identity of the father she never knew. Yes, it's that zeitgeist theme (see Transamerica review) yet again.
The large Irish cast also includes Charlotte Bradley, Catherine Byrne, Stephen Brennan, Pat Laffan and Eamonn Owens, with cameos from Patrick Bergin, Frank Kelly and TP McKenna. Unfortunately, the exceedingly wispy screenplay by Nicholas Adams makes very few demands on any of them, with the admirable exception of Meaney, who gives far more to the script than it merits.
The film is composed as a succession of ceili performances and pub scenes - pints for the men and Babycham for the women. Consequently, there are several scenes of explicit vomiting, from which even the demure Corr is not immune, and one features a man throwing up his false teeth along with everything else.
The blarney continues as this twee, insubstantial yarn offers such cautionary advice as "Behind every Irish girl is a protective mother who'd have your balls in a mangle".
And what a gorgeous place Clare is, to be sure! When John Joe emerges from his rural homestead in the morning, he stands against a spectacular landscape that David Lean would have been proud to capture in Ryan's Daughter. What a let-down, then, to read in the small print of the closing credits that the film was shot on the Isle of Man and in Northern Ireland.
