The Playboys

This film was billed as a drama. You could have fooled me. The productions of the travelling group of thespians are the funniest things I have ever seen.

Forget the plot about the young unwed mother with two suitors and just watch the hilarious performances of the rag-tag travelling gypsy players who tour Ireland performing in a threadbare tent, led by the flamboyant actor manager played with gusto by Milo O'Shea. For those of you who are not familiar with this great Irish stage actor, Mr. O'Shea played Sam Malone's Irish Uncle in the Woody's Wedding two-part episode of Cheers, on TV.

The troupe of players are not above changing the script to accommodate whatever actors or costumes are available, and they open up with a song and dance act, no matter what the play. Lines are read from cue cards, and even made up as they go along. Even Othello begins with a can can. You will never be able to watch Gone with the Wind with a straight face again after you have seen it performed as a musical in a tent in a small Irish town. I have not laughed as much since I saw the theatrical troupe in a Midsummer Night's Dream.

The lead actors, Robin Wright and Aidan Quinn make an attractive couple, and Albert Finney does well as the heavy, but it is the players who make this movie such a joy.

In the tradition of low-key Anglo-European films, this is a brilliant depiction of the meeting of an independent spirit with a closed community. This is one of their own so they will not condemn absolutely. At the same time they cannot understand why, or how, anyone can take a radically different path. Paraphrasing Victor Borge, this is acting that is so low key it is off the keyboard but because of that it resonates in a register that affects absolutely. Absotutely brilliant. This is what real movies are all about. See it! I don't really have any more to say but the instructions are that one has to write a minimum of 10 lines and/or 10,000 words. Hopefully this entry meets that minimum requirement because if this entry convinces one more person to see this movie it will have been worth it.

As is, this movie is loosely a romantic comedy which tries desperately to inject drama into a shallow, unconvincing plot. The story centers around the plight of a woman who has a child out of wedlock in a small Irish village in the 1950s. Instead of exploring the realistic spectrum of human behavior that could arise in such a situation, it relies on stale caricatures. It spends a lot of screen time trying to show how hypocritical all the village folk are as they look down on this poor single mother yet indulge in bad behavior every chance they get. For as we all know from watching many Hollywood movies, in the 1950s the world was ruled by silly hypocritical cavemen who forced their oppressive, outdated morality on the enlightened young'uns.

The main characters are not especially likable and when the single mother develops a new love interest, the plot fails to give a convincing reason why the couple would care about each other (beyond lust). That makes it very hard to care what happens.

Honestly, some people might think this movie is OK, but very few people will love it. The acting is decent, but the plot is just so uninspired and built around unrealistic clichés that it doesn't connect with the heart.

I only decided to watch this film because Albert Finney starred. He is not in many of the scenes and therefore makes little impression.

The main problem is that the script has difficulty in making a point,and when it does so it is at a glacial pace.

This film is nearly two hours long and I would say it is one hour to long. As it's summer go out and watch the grass grow instead.

This is a fine depiction of a small Irish village,in a green country where a woman has a baby whereas she's not married.And however she could,because,at the beginning of the movie,she had two men longing for her.But,and it's the only modern touch in a rather obsolete movie,she wants a man she really loves and she does not care about the piece of advice the well-meaning and the priests are always giving to her.Albert Finney has got a thankless part as the rather ugly cop, even if he's just a jealous guy.Robin Wright is a good lead.That said,it's not what you call full throttle ,and some people might think that the tempo is really slow.