Mrs. Brown's Boys D'Movie

If reviews were to be believed, we would all think D'Movie was a film about Nazis that clubbed baby seals to death. That's literally the reception this movie has received; I haven't seen a single good one. Even massive fans seem to have been bitterly disappointed with it. In spite of this, I attended a screening of it this evening (with my expectations lowered to subterranean levels, granted).

Now, the series has never been a critical favourite. It has been slated and dragged through the mud since its inception and to be fair, I can see why. I'm a casual admirer of the series but it's very, very old fashioned. So dated is the humour, it could pass for a BBC sitcom from the 70's were it not for the HD format. Its brand of humour is also very, well, cheap. Easy. Not that that's a bad thing... per say. It's certainly still funny. It works mostly because it's too jovial to dislike. The actors aren't great but they get the job done, and O'Carrol is admittedly fantastic as Mrs. Brown.

So, what happened D'Movie? The truth is, the big screen magnifies every little flaw the series has. Small things that are forgivable or even enjoyable in half-hour- interrupted-by-a-break format are downright deal breaking in this longer, less digestible format. The acting is showed up as being absolutely terrible, and the constant childish and cheap humour that gives us a laugh on telly wears thin very quickly here. The expanded scope of the plot also means that a lot of the better, more subtle family related and situational humour from the series is lost because it simply doesn't have a place here. Sure, there are a few laughs but not many for a film this long, and many "jokes" are simply embarrassing. One of the very worst is when O'Carrol loses the wig and plays a "Chinese" man by squinting his eyes and speaking in a clichéd and very stereotypical manner. That stops being funny by the time people turn 10; what's it doing here, dragged on for a laborious amount of time?

This also highlights another problem from the series that gets magnified here; the every so slight mean streak running through the script. I'm not going to call them "racist" or "discriminatory", because they're not, but such blatant use of stereotyping in place of humor really pushes its luck in a film that already calls for near-charity for it to be laughed at. If I was Russian or Chinese I'm pretty sure I'd find this film offensive; for that matter, I am gay, and watching I realized that the character Rory is a other embarrassing stereotype milked aggressively for laughs, and to be honest it's almost insulting. Don't get me wrong; humour riffing on stereotypes can be great (which, to be fair, is done very well in the series), but here it just wallows in it instead of creating comedy, and it feels plain mean, which is an absolute pity when the few laughs it did get were actually from the more good natured jokes.

Other problems arise just from the sheer laziness from other facets of production. The opening sequence is just abysmal, featuring the kind of "dancing" that would be considered embarrassing in a village pantomime (literally); a problem not helped by the fact it's repeated at the end instead of a proper finale, like the brilliant sing song at the end of one of the episodes on telly. The soundtrack is downright atrocious, too, often with cliché orchestral cues when a joke is cracked, or typical weepy music when something sad is happening. By the time one of Westlife's dreadful ballads rolls around in one of the key scenes, you may just need the sick bucket.

So far I've slated the movie, and to be honest I could go on and on because it's just an excruciatingly bad film. It really, really is an absolute disaster; if this hadn't been a television series before this was released, I probably would have given it a 1, honestly. But, as I say up top, it's a generous 2. Why? Well,truth be told, one thing shines through; it has a lot of spirit, which at times nearly (NEARLY) makes up for all the flaws. As I said, Brendan is honest to god fantastic as Mrs. Brown; nobody could play her better. The few laughs the film does manage are enough to remind you how really funny the series is, too, even though they show how bad the rest of the film is. None of these things save this production though; with this script, nothing could have.

I feel like I've over-analyzed this film, but I don't think I have, really. It simply doesn't work, and I've tried to root out the reasons why. Many people might think that none of these things matter, well, I say otherwise. Good film comedy runs like an engine, and this one has too many small problems under the hood to really get going, eventually just becoming one big problem. I've heard Mr. O'Carrol plans on making a trilogy; let's hope next time (if there is one) he manages to weed out the problems present here to make something closer in quality to the series.

If you are, like me, a great fan of the TV series, I would advise giving this movie a wide berth. Any funny gags are predictable and very few and far between. Some of the plot lines are poor to the point of embarrassment. This has proved, once again, that British comedy rarely transfers well to the big screen. The opening song and dance routine and the closing, vomit inducing, court room speech are just not what Mrs Brown's Boys is about. The scenes involving the blind ninjas are extremely clumsily directed and executed and O'Carroll's caricature of the leader of the ninjas is, to be quite honest, nothing short of crude and offensive. I hope they abandon any attempts to make further movies and try to resurrect the hilarious TV series in its true form before a live audience.

Review: I know that I'll be the only person saying this, but I didn't really find this movie that funny. I found the jokes quite silly and the storyline wasn't that great. I must admit, it's the only movie that I have seen that keeps a couple of the bloopers in the final cut, which were the funniest scenes, but I failed to get the humour. The courtroom scenes were ridiculous, until the lawyer gets turrets, but apart from that, there wasn't anything that amazing happening. If your fans of the show, you will enjoy this film, but I haven't seen the series before so I wasn't that impressed. Disappointing!

Round-Up: Right from the beginning, when I saw the dancing scenes, I was a bit dubious about this film. The jokes come thick and fast, but you have to be into this type of humour to find it funny. When the Russian gangsters get introduced, it just goes from bad to worse, but judging by the movies takings, I must be the only person that didn't think that this film wasn't that great. On the plus side, it does put some parts of Dublin on the map and I'm sure that Moore Street market will get a lot of tourists. Personally, I was more interested in the outtakes than the movie itself.

Budget: $3.6million Worldwide Gross: $29million

I recommend this movie to people who are into there Irish comedies about Mrs. Brown who is pressured by Russian gangsters to sell her stall so the developers can claim the land. 2/10

You know what you are going to get with Mrs Brown. Low brow silly comedy.

This is a big budget version of the television show. It has outside location shooting in Dublin rather than it all being based in a television studio. They even include some scripted corpsing.

Of course there has already been a Mrs Brown movie before. Anjelica Huston starred as Agnes Browne and directed the movie back as well back in 1999. It was more whimsical and featured Agnes Brown running her market stall.

The market stall is a plot device in this movie. Some Russians with the help of a crooked Irish politician want to close the market and build a shopping centre. Coincidentally Mrs Brown has received a tax demand running into millions of Euros.

It is all a bit far fetched and lacks the core elements of the television series which made it enjoyable and at times amusing. At one point you have people dressed up as ninjas looking for a tax receipt written in braille but it just feels dragged out.

Brendan O'Carroll has struggled to extend this for a feature film and it does stink of a cash in at a time when the BBC series was getting high ratings.

I really looked forward to seeing this. I love the TV show. Put simply though, like so many great television comedies, it just doesn't work in a full length movie. Of course there are funny (or at least mildly amusing) moments, but just not enough of them to carry the rather absurd plot. The solicitor's character and affliction had rich comedic potential, but was wasted in style. Hopefully this disappointing effort will not damage the reputation of what is a great success story. If you get bored like I did, at least the last line gets the biggest laugh of the whole thing (at least it did when I was there). However, that says more about the quality of what has gone before than it does about that moment.

Very poor.