Thursday, September 18, 2008

A Film With Me In It

Ian Fitzgibbon | 2008 | 89 mins | Ireland

One of those what-the-fuck- just-happened / I-can't- imagine-what'll-happen-next dark comedies, A Film With Me In It is much fuller of unexpected surprises than most films that claim to be full of, well, unexpected surprises.

An aspiring actor named Mark (Mark Doherty, who also wrote the script) and his girlfriend Sally (Amy Huberman) are on the verge of breaking up and getting evicted from their rat-hole apartment. Mark's been so broke that he's been secretly withholding rent from their sleazy landlord, which of course Sally doesn't know, leading to many confusing exchanges about why repairs haven't been done.

Mark confides in his best friend, who happens to also be his broke, perpetually drunk upstairs neighbour, Pierce (Dylan Moran, a really funny guy you might remember from Shaun of the Dead).

While the two plot and scheme to get out of their rather pathetic circumstances, a series of increasingly unlikely, random, unforeseen and gruesome accidents and problems start piling up for the sorry pair to deal with. The more they try to fix things, the more of a mess they create.

Pretty funny and ironic in the true sense of the word, A Film With Me In It is reminiscent of the "We've gone on holiday by mistake", terror-stricken-actor vibe of Withnail and I (although I'm sorry to say not actually as funny as it).

Still, the very Irish sense of how truly hilarious it can be when everything's absolutely gone to shit (which, as an eastern European, I can really relate to) does make for some great comedy and genuinely bizarre, zany moments.

1 comment:

aaron said...

dylan moran also plays a hilarious drunk on the Black Books series. he's great at a type.