PADDYWHACKED (WILD MOUNTAIN THYME)

 

When the trailer dropped for John Patrick Shanley's 'Wild Mountain Thyme' last November, it was met with universal derision in Ireland.

Irish actors, writers and directors have not been averse over the years to playing to national stereotypes in their pursuit of International success.

However the relentless paddywackery in the trailer for 'Wild Mountain Thyme' seemed to be a step too far for many people in Ireland.

So hostile was the reaction that it has taken Shanley's film about six months to reach the Irish public.

Its absence from video on demand services, however, seemed to spark a perverse curiosity amongst some Irish audiences intrigued by how poorly the film portrayed Ireland.

Could it really be as bad as the trailer suggested?

Now that Shanley's film has landed, it turns out that 'Wild Mountain Thyme' is indeed worse than first feared.

It's as if every tired Irish cliché has been scribbled on a piece of paper, scrunched up into a ball, put into a hat and then drawn out, only for The entire contents to be included in the movie anyway.

Sexually repressed shy Irishmen, poorly poured Guinness, flame haired colleens in shawls, endless conversations about land, second generation Yanks returning to the Old Country, unrelenting rain, small town gossipmongers, lush green fields, cattle, communal singing and fiddle playing in pubs, sobbing in church, wise old women, old men with a twinkle in their eye and the occasional pearl of wisdom - it's all there.

The only thing that's missing is the Kellogg's Lucky Charms Leprechaun.

An adaptation of Shanley's play 'Outside Mullingar,' the film is narrated by Christopher Walken's stubborn old codger of a farmer Tony Reilly.

Tony fancies himself as a bit of a sage, trotting out aphorisms by the dozen like: "They say that if an Irishman dies while telling a story, you can be rest assured he'll be back."

A widower, he lives on a Westmeath farm with Jamie Dornan's Anthony Reilly who has a love of nature, who tends to their livestock but is also cripplingly shy around women.

In the next farm lives Emily Blunt's Rosemary Muldoon - the kind of hot tempered Colleen Maureen O'Hara would have played in her prime - and her no nonsense but ailing ma, Dearbhla Molloy's Aoife.

The Muldoons own a bit of land which Tony has his eye on and which he makes an awkward play for.

And sure, doesn't he do it after Aoife's husband, Don Wycherley's gun toting, crow shooting Chris Muldoon is barely in his grave?

Aoife doesn't give in but is keen to know his intentions when it comes to passing on his own farm to Anthony.

However Tony doesn't believe Anthony is equipped to run the farm and considers selling it instead to his suave New York cousin, John Hamm's Adam.

Adam duly arrives in the Old Country in a plush Rolls Royce and is immediately charmed by Rosemary.

However she is besotted with Anthony and has been ever since they were children.

And doesn't she like to ride her horse bareback through the lush green fields and mountains in the pouring rain?

And isn't Anthony also in love with her but keeps bottling a marriage proposal, even losing his mother's ring that he was going to use?

In the worst birds and the bees reference ever committed to the screen, Rosemary also believes she is a swan princess after her father introduced her to Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake,' while Anthony believes he is a bumblebee.. or something.

Shanley conjures up a depressingly twee litany of boring Irish cinematic clichés and stereotypes strung together by the flimsiest of storylines.

Very little makes sense and at times the action - if you can call it that - seems disjointed and half baked.

Characters die and are quickly disposed of as the plot trudges along.

Almost everyone talks in "may the wind be at your back" aphorisms.

The performances are not surprisingly uniformly poor, with Dornan, Blunt and Walken struggling to nail their rural southern Irish accents.

To be fair, even if they were note perfect it wouldn't matter.

The source material is so weak it is hard to see how the cast could ever shine.

Shanley also goes over the top with the look of the film.

The audience is subjected to a constant barrage of sweeping drone shots of the Irish countryside.

As it doubles up for Westmeath, Shanley's flyovers of the gorgeous Co Mayo countryside of Crossmolina and Ballina grow very tiresome 

It is hard not to feel sorry too for the cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt whose sole remit seems to have been to amplify the greenery 

The land in 'Wild Mountain Thyme' is so green, you begin to suspect Shanley has had his crew paint the fields with an even darker shade of green.

Shanley has no feeling too for the Irish vernacular or comprehension of contemporary rural Irish life.

'Wild Mountain Thyme' seems to think today's Ireland is like the Ireland portrayed in John Ford's 'The Quiet Man' - although he does spare us shots of ponies and traps.

Someone really ought to have pointed him to John Michael McDonagh's 'Calvary,' Lenny Abrahamson's 'Garage' or indeed ''Normal People' for an authentic flavour of rural Irish life

Unlike those great works, every Irish character in this film is a dewy or twinkly eyed poet or philosopher, bemoaning how the death of a parent left them colourblind or how men are taller so they can use their height to "balance the truth and goodness of women".

No? Me neither. 

I'm still scratching my head over that one.

There are frankly bizarre bits of dialogue too where Rosemary talks about freezing her eggs as she waits for Anthony and highly questionable moments too like when Anthony recoils in horror when asked by her if he is gay.

But mostly, this is a movie stuck in a watery, old fashioned, sentimental ex-pat notion of Ireland and the Irish.

It is not aimed at winning the hearts of those living in Ireland.

Like 'Leap Year' and 'PS, I Love You,' it is a weak romcom aimed at an international audience and toys with their misconceived notions of what Irish people are like.

It's about as authentically Irish as 'Artemis Fowl' and 'Pixie'.

'Wild Mountain Thyme' is dreadful but it isn't really worth getting into a lather about.

Its intentional attempts at comedy are about as funny as a hernia - although mocking Irish audiences may laugh and then get bored during the movie as they play cliché bingo.

A bad film is simply a bad film wherever it is set and whatever stereotypes are trotted out.

'Wild Mountain Thyme' is just an absolute stinker.

('Wild Mountain Thyme' was release in cinemas in North America on December 11, 2020 and on video on demand services in the UK and Ireland on April 30, 2021)