> A Film With Me In It
Director: Ian FitzGibbon
Cast: Dylan Moran, Mark Doherty, Amy Huberman, Keith Allen, Aisling O'Sullivan, David O'Doherty]
Rating: (M)
3 stars (out of 5)
Reviewed by Christine Powley
Sally (Amy Huberman) lives in a run-down flat with her terminally unemployed actor boyfriend Mark (Mark Doherty).
The landlord (Keith Allen) refuses to make any repairs to their crumbling basement apartment.
Plus they care for Mark's paralysed brother David (David O'Doherty) without any outside assistance.
The last straw is when she discovers that Mark has not been passing on the rent she pays.
Sally is the most sympathetic character in A Film With Me In It (Rialto).
Unfortunately the "Me" in the title is sad-sack Mark, closely followed by his even more hopeless best friend Pierce (Dylan Moran).
Pierce and Mark are kind of working on a film script to showcase Mark.
It is a black comedy about a man who commits a crime that goes horribly wrong. In an eerie case of life imitating art, a series of implausible accidents begin to dog Mark, forcing him into a life of crime that he is psychologically ill-equipped to handle.
A Film With Me In It is funny, especially when Irish comic Dylan Moran is in full flight, but it is a bitter humour that makes you gasp at its bleakness as much as laugh at the wit of it.
As always, humour is subjective and younger, less sensitive souls may well find this the cool black comedy they have been waiting for.
Best thing: The pitch-black humour goes where most of us would never dare.
Worst thing: Mark is such a passive wet blanket it is hard to muster much interest in him.
See it with: Anyone who has ever lived in a student flat.
