Excellent but underrated film

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Having watched a lot of Irish films recently, this is one of the better ones, and yet there is something off kilter in making a laugh out of junkies' dysfunctional lives. Mark Halloran's script is problematic at times – Laurel and Hardy on smack being the tag-line. But his performance is impressive; he inhabits his character well, while Tom Murphy plays the pathetic sidekick for laughs. The story is episodic, basically two heroin addicts trying to score. They wander around the city, meeting other characters and even get round to mugging a disabled person. There is a suitably jaunty soundtrack, but after a while it becomes a little repetitive. The director's background in advertising shows in the slick visuals and the whole package is well put together. It throws up interesting questions about portraying the marginalized. Are their stories being robbed to win plaudits and awards. Would a film about coke sniffing advertising folk be as interesting.. Still in a sea of mediocrity, it's worth a look. High point the resolution, low point Murphy's occasional gurning for the camera. Warning: Brendan Gleeson is not in this film.

Everybody in the world ought to know that. Yet there are still people who do. Adam and Paul proves this as well as showing the hopeless deprivation homeless junkies exist in. It's not depressing, unless you're a junkie yourself and are heading in that direction.In the course of one single day, Adam and Paul try to scam their way through hunger, friends and their relentless need for more heroin. They are clueless, zombified and about as dead as living people get. It's hard to feel sorry for them, in fact you'll probably feel as much contempt for them as their former friends (hardly first-class citizens themselves) do when they show up and mooch.If you think your life is crap then you need only to compare it to Adam and Paul to cheer yourself up. And if you were ever tempted by drugs then this film ought to put you off that curiosity.

One of the first comments in the movie becomes the corner post of the irony of urban life. Paul states "I feel sorry for those Bulgarians.." while living in conditions that are as bad as anywhere. The actors did a great job, and you feel hungry and cold and angst with them. If the director's intention was to get viewers to feel empathy for the main characters, it works well.The setting, the boy's hometown neighborhood, provides links to the boys' past and some later conversation gives an indication how their state of affairs came to be. The pace is a bit slow, but dramatic rather than boring. Making movies about junkies, it's easy to be dramatic and provide impact, this one does well. Not as graphic as it could have been, but definitely satisfying. Entertaining and quite sobering, probably a good watch for any 14yr old urban male as an education of consequences.

Touted as one of the best Irish films of the year, Adam and Paul was one huge disappointment in my opinion. With other huge titles such as Intermission, Cowboys and Angels and Man about Dog to compete with, this clumsy tale of 2 heroin addicts in inner city Dublin simply does not meet the standard.While the acting was above average (particularly in Tom Murphy's case), the characters simply don't seem believable and the development is weak and slow. Adam and Paul both seem to morph into different characters as the plot permits: One minute they are playing with a toddler while the next they are robbing a handicapped teenager. The storyline is unstructured and tedious to say the least, with plot holes appearing left, right, and center. Meanwhile, the comic relief is dry and certain scenes seem to drift by without adding anything to the story or the character development.Overall Adam and Paul isn't a bad movie but far from the critical acclaim it has been receiving recently. The director Lenny Abrahamson shows good potential however I believe his style would be better-suited to a more aggressive movie, as the long scenes of Adam and Paul seem to drag on behind the passive tone of the movies main characters