Wild About Harry

This movie is great! Great humour, terrific acting, lovely Irish accents, relaxing, romantic, sexy... What else do you want? It made me feel happy.

What a pleasure this was. A well written, well crafted piece of black comedy which demonstrates the fact that a fine story and emotive acting can make up for a lack of big budget sets and effects. Filmed on location (with good effect) in Northern Ireland, 'Wild About Harry' tells the tale of Harry McKee, an aging lothario who combines his job as a TV chef with a life of drunken parties and seducing his female fans. As you would imagine, this does not bode well for his marriage to long suffering wife Ruth, who has set divorce proceedings in motion. Before the hearing though, Harry gets attacked by thugs and ends up in a coma.

When he awakes, he has 'lost' 25 years of memory and thinks he is an 18 year old, clean living, boy with his whole life ahead of him. What follows is a keenly observed story of how life can sometimes give you a second chance to repair any mistakes you've made. 'Wild About Harry' is based on a book by superb local author Colin Bateman, and anyone who has read any of his work will know that there are plenty of colourful characters, situations and lines to enjoy. We need more films like this to refresh the soul from the usual Hollywood pap !

I don't know about this one, I hate to be down about this film: the idea of the film was interesting, and the acting was passable. Where it fell down was in the storyline, it just felt dull. Amanda Donohoe just felt too bland as a suffering housewife, dealing with her husband's infidelities; I'm used to her playing lesbians and snakewomen and stuff like that. I can't even imagine a fat lard like Harry would be cheating on a hotwife like Ruth (Donohoe); but I suppose if we could accept Michael Douglas cheating on hotwife Anne Archer with Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, then we can accept this. I just wasn't convinced by the characters in this movie.

The idea of amnesia offering you a chance to rebuild your life has been explored in films such as 'Amateur' and 'The Red Squirrel', and is also the subject of this movie. I'm not sure how realistic the medical symptoms are in any of these movies, but it makes for a nice premise, and the take here is particularly ingenious: a famous but awful man loses his memories of his entire married life just as his wife is about to (quite deservedly) divorce him. Unfortunately, although this is a sprightly movie, it's also a silly one, and most of its conceits are paper-thin. It's still fun to watch, though, in spite of its lightweight build.

A thoroughly enjoyable movie. OK so it was never going to win any Oscars. But it was refreshing to see a movie set in Northern Ireland which wasn't one of those American garbage productions about their romanticised view of "The Troubles". It showed normal life (within the context of the story) does happen in NI. Much more entertaining than an hour of midweek soaps. Good cast, good laughs and a happy, feel good ending. Despite the occasionally wavering accents there were fine performances from Brendan Gleeson and Amanda Donohoe. Also another fine turn from James Nesbitt and Adrian Dunbar, particularly the latter's concern for his sexual preference possibly being made public in very conservative NI. Worth a watch of an evening. Maybe with a pizza and some beers.