This lucky Irish winner is absolutely 'Devine'

COURTESY FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES These are old guys. THe like to drink. They stole a lot of money.

Sheer charm is usually not enough to delight and entertain the moviegoers at York Square Cinema. Non-American-accented English helps, however, as The Full Monty proved last year, when the film remained at the theater throughout the winter and spring
seasons. Waking Ned Devine has plenty
of Gaelic glee and sexagenarian syrup--not to mention yellow stars, blue moons, and purple horseshoes--to charm even the stodgiest of York Square more-avant-than-thou types.

The story is simple enough. When good friends Jackie (Ian Bannen) and Michael (David Kelly) discover that the winner of the Irish National Lottery is a member of their own 52-person hamlet of Tullymore, they alert only Jackie's wife, Annie, played sympathetically by Fionnula Flanagan. The three then set out to find and befriend the winner before he or she can claim and cash the check alone.

Only after treating many villagers to drinks, dinners, and scented raspberry
soaps (which make for amusing jokes throughout) do the buddies learn that
Ned Devine is the winner. And when Jackie and Michael head to Ned's house, chicken dinner in hand, they find the millionaire with a smile on his face and a lottery ticket in his hand--dead. So Jackie and Michael contrive a plan to impersonate the
lucky stiff in an attempt to claim the seven million pounds for themselves, a scheme Annie does not condone. As expected, the luck of the Irish takes a turn for the hilarious.

As a matter of fact, many of the film's funniest moments occur before the lottery's "man from the city" even shows up to make the required inquiries. The first part of the movie, in which Jackie and Michael search for the winner, introduces the village residents. Each of them is deftly sketched, revealing a number of original characteristics. There is the stinky pig farmer (James Nesbitt) trying his hardest to woo the love of his life, Maggie (played with refreshing clarity by Susan Lynch). There's a singing postmistress and an aftershave-soaked ladies man. The cohesion and common insanity of the village, which is warmly portrayed, is the backdrop against which the events of the movie's second half unfold.

In other films such a heavy dose of sugar might be sickening, but Waking Ned Devine never pretends to be anything other than a feel-good movie. The audience never has to struggle with artificiality or heavy-handedness. Bannen's zaniness is infectious, so that the audience is just as deliriously excited about the schemes Jackie's "good Irish brains" have cooked up as he is. The easy naturalism displayed by Kelly and Flanagan completes the trinity of solid performances at the heart of this character-driven story.

Devine pokes fun at the cinematic cliché of nutty Irish villagers without being snide about it. It pays attention to the village and the uniqueness of its inhabitants without depicting them as a bunch of drunken, dancing leprechauns. Indeed, by the end of the film, one is grateful for the story's general lack of ethical considerations, because they would detract from the specificity and peculiarity of this insular community.

The movie's one moment of mean-spiritedness, an untimely accident, is also its only moment of incongruity, as the surprise darkens the final scenes. This freak incident--which is actually funny--assures the viewer that the film has tied up all its loose ends. It just gives the villagers yet another reason to celebrate.

Waking Ned Devine, despite a brief bit of nastiness, is thoroughly entertaining. It is the perfect kind of movie to see when you have either nothing to do or too much to do. If for no other reason, see it for Kelly's triumphantly nude motorbike ride.

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