THE PLAYBOYS
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
THE PLAYBOYS is a film directed by Gillies Mackinnon from a screenplay by Shane Connaughton and Kerry Crabbe. It stars Aidan Quinn, Robin Wright, Albert Finney, and Milo O'Shea. Rated PG-13 for mature themes and humor.
THE PLAYBOYS is a Irish charmer, co-written by the author of MY LEFT FOOT, Shane Connaughton, and filmed in the author's home village, Redhills, employing the local people.
Unfortunately, it appears as if the film was rather clumsily edited down to a commercial running time, so that some of the subplots appear to have been abruptly abandoned before they were resolved.
The main story is a romance between an independent, unwed mother (the year is 1957 and the village is not pleased by the woman's refusal to name the father, much less marry him) and an itinerant player, whose company The Playboys settles in for a week's stay in the village green. The mother, Tara, is played the American actress, Robin Wright, whose previous credits include the PRINCESS BRIDE. The player, Tom, is played by Aidan Quinn. The romantic story proceeds more or less predictably for these two: she initially repulses him, he perseveres. The spoiler in the village police Sgt. Hegarty, played by Albert Finney, who also has plans for Tara.
The theme of the film is probably more interesting than the romance, just as the acting by all the professional performers raises the whole film above its own shortcomings. The theme is change. The village priest is against it. "Change is a dangerous thing," he warns. All change is inherently bad, but the village, like Ireland and the world, is changing despite his maledictions and clumsy opposition. Television here, as in last year's AVALON, marks the end of the old ways. We see the first antenna being erected over the village pub, "high up in the air, where the pictures are." Tara's personal morality is also a mark of change; for it is easier for us in the audience to understand her actions than it is for us to understand the anachronistic villagers. The priest and the villagers try to shame into conforming to their narrow ideas. One of the women asks, "Who's the father?" "Ask your husbands," Tara replies. They tell her that until she marries the father, bad times are going to plague the village and indeed a local tragedy is laid directly at her feet.
As subplots, we have Tara as a smuggler and black marketeer and we have a mystery about an IRA bomber operating in the locale. Neither of these is resolved at the end of the movie, but they certainly are part and parcel of the theme of change.
Despite this, the actors give us some fine performances, and no one better than Albert Finney, who is one of the great actors of the English-language cinema. As a man in enormous pain and conflict, a man seeking salvation and forgiveness, he makes an unsympathetic character understandable and forgivable, if not quite likeable.
Another fine performance is turned in Milo O'Shea as The Playboys' impresario and lead, vain, ridiculous, as myopic as the priest in his own way, bravely carrying the tradition of the provincial troupe, a tradition soon to be extinguished by the advent of TV. The Playboys' performance provide with some wonderful comedy, btw, especially their hastily improvised version -- a send-up if only they knew it -- GONE WITH THE WIND, which is playing in the local cinema.
The script captures the writer's native village -- its cadences, its worldview, its blindnesses, its superstitions (what do we make of a miracle in the show tent?). It likes these people without overly romanticizing them. And it's as rich with Irish humor as it is with their insularity and pettiness.
THE PLAYBOYS is a lightweight, but charming, film that I can cheerfully recommend to you even at full price.
(In the Seattle area, THE PLAYBOYS is playing at five theaters, Guild 45th, Alderwood, Renton Village, Seatac 12 South, and Kirkland Parkplace.)
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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