The Craic

Jimeoin and a good many of his mates apparently were on the run from our Immigration Department in the early 80's. Many of the incidents in his first film The Craic are based on the sorts of things that happened to the lads and lasses as they made their quick getaways. We'll have to assume that he's now made his peace with the authorities.

I've only glimpsed Jimeoin on TV a couple of times but I'd imagine that The Craic probably mirrors his on stage and perhaps his real life personality pretty closely. If Jimeoin is a quietly spoken Irish Immigrant with a gentle but acute wit; an everyman good bloke who's difficult to understand, then here he is.

Jimeoin also appears to be pretty self effacing and disinclined to big note himself, which is a pretty good trick considering that he's an entertainer in his own first film. I wonder if he's as nice a bloke as he makes out to be. Nobody is that nice, and funny as well, are they?

The Craic is like a pretty well made home movie, one obviously written by Jimeoin. You've seen most of the really good bits on the shorts but The Craic does rise to sand dune heights every now and then.

The camera hasn't ventured in amongst the back packing world too many times and The Craic suggests that the time might be ripe.

The outstanding feature of this film is its "feel good" quality -in the best sense of that expression. I must admit that I'd never seen Jimmeoin before, so maybe I'm just enamoured by first impressions. Nevertheless, I laughed out loud more than once while watching this movie, and I left the theatre feeling glad that I had seen "The Craic." Can't ask for more than that can you? Go see it.

I'm a big fan of Jimeoin's work, but this film is really nothing special.

The plot is pretty weak, and at the movie's end, you may feel that there was something missing in it.

That said, the acting is pretty good, but comes across as being incomplete.

Good time filler, but don't expect anything special. Hire The Castle instead.

Rating: C

Jimeoin is a strange comedian indeed. He seems to be better placed on the the stage telling jokes than in a situational comedy, and he looks extremely awkward in this movie, and tries to ring a joke out of everything, even some situations that are woefully unfunny. I have a feeling that the distributors thought that Jimeoin's name would sell this product alone, as the script is very poor. It appears to be about immigration out to get these two guys but at times it plods so dreadfully and is so incoherent that it is impossible to actually make heads or tails out of the dreadfully incoherent script. Jimeoin certainly gets points for trying, but maybe if he actually tried a little harder this film would have been much better!

This is one of the funniest movies I have seen for a while, coming close to 'The Castle'. The humour was fresh, the plot original, and the acting superb. I never thought Jimeoin could do a movie, but I have been proved wrong.