WAKING NED DEVINE (Fox Searchlight) Starring: Ian Bannen, David Kelly, Fionnula Flanagan, James Nesbitt, Susan Lynch, Brendan F. Dempsey. Screenplay: Kirk Jones. Producers: Glynis Murray and Richard Holmes. Director: Kirk Jones. MPAA Rating: PG (profanity, adult themes, brief nudity) Running Time: 91 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
It's difficult to explain how 85 minutes of effortless charm could be neutralized by one scene without giving away the ending of WAKING NED DEVINE. As a film critic I almost always champion films that take narrative risks, avoiding the plague of the obvious. WAKING NED DEVINE takes just such a risk, but the result feels like a particularly nasty bait-and-switch. Where many films err with gratuitous sentimentality, this one errs with a gratuitous lack of sentimentality.
The most frustrating thing is that so much of it is so entertaining. Set in the coastal Irish hamlet of Tulaigh Mhor, it centers on Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen) and Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly), two elderly friends among the town's 52 inhabitants. One morning, Jackie makes the connection from a newspaper headline that a winning lottery ticket was purchased in Tulaigh Mhor, meaning one of the other 50 townspeople is now very wealthy -- and very desirable as a friend. After narrowing down the field of contenders, Jackie realizes the winner must be fisherman Ned Devine. Unfortunately, Ned is in no position to claim his prize, having dropped dead from shock while watching the numbers announced on television.
Thus begins a sparkling bit of farce as Jackie, Michael and eventually the entire town conspire to share in the late Ned's good fortune. When lottery offical Jim Kelly (Brendan F. Dempsey) arrives from Dublin to verify the winner, Michael is forced into the unfamiliar role of actor, posing as Ned so the $6 million pound jackpot won't go without a claimant. Both lead actors are splendid -- Bannen the gleeful mastermind behind the plan, and Kelly the flustered star of his show. The sequence in which Jackie and Michael try to set up the deception, caught off-guard by Mr. Kelly's early arrival, shows director Kirk Jones to have a rare sort of comic timing. Farce rarely works on film the way it works on a stage, but WAKING NED DEVINE fires on every cylinder -- game actors in a great comic situation guided by a talented director.
There's also a major sub-plot in WAKING NED DEVINE, a romantic triangle of sorts between single mother Maggie (Susan Lynch), gentle but foul-smelling pig farmer Finn (James Nesbitt) and self-satisfied ladies' man Pat Mulligan (Matthew Devitt). Initially, the whole business seems to be little more than a distraction, an excuse for gags about odor and fruity soaps. Gradually, however, it begins to take shape as the ideal set-up for the story's lesson. Finn loves his work as a pig farmer, but Maggie will only marry him if he gives it up. Will the lottery windfall in which he'll share change Finn into a more suitable husband, yet a less satisfied man? How will riches change all the citizens of Tulaigh Mhor?
And it is here, friends, that WAKING NED DEVINE takes its left turn into black comedy and bleak morality. Plenty of viewers will walk away from WAKING NED DEVINE believing they have seen a feel-good film with a happy ending, but it is an entirely contrary reaction which blunted my enthusiasm. I laughed and laughed and laughed through much of the film. Then I gasped. Then I fumed. WAKING NED DEVINE sheds its sympathy and its sense of good humor for what, in retrospect, feels like a cheap shock and a toast to situational ethics. 85 minutes of effortless charm counts for a lot. If only one scene didn't make it count for so much less.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Devine interventions: 6.
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