WHEN BRENDAN MET TRUDY ----------------------
Straight arrow Brendan (Peter McDonald, "The Opportunists") is a school teacher who visits his local pub after choir practice where he meets Trudy (Flora Montgomery). She tells him she's a Montessori teacher and gets him to sing a hymn. But Brendan will do more than sing for his supper once he discovers Trudy's true profession in "When Brendan Met Trudy."
We first meet Brendan lying in a rain filled gutter, recreating the drowning scene that opens "Sunset Boulevard." Brendan's a film buff and writer Roddy Doyle ("The Snapper," "The Commitments") peppers his film with constant movie references. We flash back to the titular meeting before catching up with that opener about two thirds into the film, when Brendan's life has spun out of control due to the wild ways of Trudy, who's a professional thief. Brendan hates Trudy's friends. Trudy hates Brendan's family, particularly his witchy sister. In order to win Trudy back after the gutter incident, he has to agree to accompany Trudy to rob his sister's house and do unmentionable things to her living room carpet.
"When Brendan Met Trudy" is a terribly uneven film which doesn't roar into life until its final thirty minutes. Brendan and Trudy never seem like a couple. They'd probably hate each other in the real world. While McDonald gives an appealing performance, Flora Montgomery is a bit too forced, like the film itself. Essentially, it's a boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl story by way of the 'is my significant other a psychopath?' films such as "So I Married an Axe Murderer." Its charms are to be found in the flourishes. Brendan's imaginative film fantasies find him exitting a frame a la John Wayne in "The Searchers." Trudy's influence morphs his hymn singing into the most outrageous cover ever of Iggy Pop's "The Passenger." His all boy class starts getting assignments like "Jane Austen loved a good laugh - discuss with reference to 'Persuasion.'" Brendan's headmaster, who we're fooled into thinking is about to fire him, turns out to be a sympathetic eccentric who fully appreciates making a fool of oneself for the love of a woman.
Director Kieron J. Walsh does well with the whimsy, yet allows his 95 minute flim to drag in its first hour. "When Brendan Met Trudy" never quite attains the frothy heights it's aiming for.
C+
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