"Lotto Irish Whimsy"
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What You Need To Know:
WAKING NED DEVINE is more of a character study than a laugh-out-loud Irish comedy, so some of the reviews are a bit misleading. Beautiful scenery and good acting add to the enjoyment of this picture, but they can’t overcome a lack of comic buildup and few dramatic climaxes. Although the movie has a mildly moral resolution to the fraud that the townspeople commit, it sanctions their fraud and the lies they must do to perpetrate their crime. It also takes a cavalier attitude to Ned’s death and the death of another person that many people may find distasteful. Finally, the movie has some strong profanity and some male nudity
Content:
(B, PaPa, C, LL, V, S, N, AA, D, M) Mildly moral worldview overall with a moderate touch of pagan larceny throughout & a few Christian elements, including 2 priests; 1 obscenity & 13 profanities, mostly mild; mild violence including car wreck kills one person; no sex but story contains illegitimate child & reference to marital sex; upper & rear male nudity, obscured long-shot of full male nudity & implied full nudity; alcohol use & abuse; smoking; and, miscellaneous immorality, such as old woman in wheelchair takes advantage of her handicap & townspeople lie to government official.
More Detail:
A bit of Irish whimsy blows into movie theaters this season in the critically-acclaimed WAKING NED DEVINE. Some are touting it as a hilarious new English comedy like the ones Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness and Terry Thomas used to make before they came to Hollywood, but it is more like a minor Irish character study.
Filled with beautiful Irish landscapes shot on the Isle of Man, WAKING NED DEVINE focuses on a scheme developed by two old coots named Jackie O’Shea and Michael O’Sullivan. Jackie alerts Michael that someone in the small village of Tully More, population 52, has won the Irish Lottery, the Lotto. They go off in search of the winner, most notably by inviting all the regular players to a chicken dinner. One of the players fails to show up, a man named Ned Devine. Jackie goes to the man’s house and finds him dead, clutching the winning lottery ticket. Right away, Jackie hatches a scheme to have Michael pose as Ned, because Ned has no relatives, and the money will therefore go back into the Lotto pot for next week.
A series of misadventures occurs when the lottery official comes to verify the winning ticket and the identity of the winner. Jackie decides to split the money with the rest of the town because Ned would have wanted it that way, and because he needs their cooperation if Michael is to pull off his impersonation of Ned. The movie’s most touching moment occurs when Jackie must pretend his friend Michael is lying in Ned’s coffin instead of the real Ned. He asks wouldn’t it be nice if a person could attend his own funeral beforehand so that he can truly know how much he is loved. The movie also suggests that dividing the winnings is a good memorial to Ned’s memory. Hence the title, WAKING NED DEVINE, as in Irish wake/funeral.
WAKING NED DEVINE was somewhat of a disappointment for such a highly touted movie. As noted, it is more of a character study than a laugh-out-loud Irish comedy, so the ads for the movie, and some of its reviews, are a bit misleading. Ian Bannen gives a good performance as Jackie, as does James Nesbitt as Pig Finn. David Kelly as Michael has a wonderful scene with the lottery official in Ned’s house and some touching moments with Bannen as Jackie. Beautiful scenery and good acting add to the enjoyment of this picture, but they can’t overcome a lack of comic buildup and too few dramatic climaxes.
Although the movie has a mildly moral resolution to the fraud that the townspeople commit, it sanctions their fraud and the lies they must do to perpetrate their crime. It also takes a cavalier attitude to Ned’s death and the death of another person that many people may find distasteful. Finally, the movie has some strong profanity in it and some male nudity.
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