That was an excellent one.

Best movie ever!

Admirable film.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Jimmy McMahon (Colm Meaney) leads his traditional Ceili band in Liverpool despite the explosion of the Beatles. Meanwhile back in County Clare, John Joe (Bernard Hill) is sharpening his group to defend their victories at the Irish traditional music competition. Jimmy McMahon returns to County Clare for the competition and does battle with his brother John Joe McMahon.The music is good at times. Colm Meaney and Bernard Hill are solid actors who carry this movie. The other actors aren't as good. Andrea Corr of the band The Corrs does a passable job as the ingénue daughter. Occasionally, there are a few cute jokes, but the drama isn't as good as it should. They dance around the secret for half of the movie. The secret gets a big reveal, but it's only a blip in the otherwise generic movie. Director John Irvin just doesn't have the touch for this material.

This is a very poorly paced, acted, and directed movie that, with a little imagination, could have delivered a decent story. The plot, such that it is, centres around two brothers from County Clare that parted in anger twenty years before the movie's setting at an Irish music festival. They meet as competitors, having engaged in some ham-fisted attempts to derail each other's arrival in time for registration, and quickly revisit the reasons for their acrimony. The plot develops so predictably from then on that the side stories are more interesting - but only marginally.The director curiously adheres to some stereotypes of Irish people and culture (and Liverpudlians' too), with plenty of drinking, cursing, vomiting, and general idiocy; however, he gets some very obvious cultural markers wrong - single women in pubs (the movie is set in the 1960s, when Ireland was far from its current liberal self), a man ordering wine in a pub (utterly unheard of back then!), and some non-Irish outsiders going totally unnoticed. Worse than this, however, is his unwillingness to go anywhere unconventional or unpredictable: characters are as flimsy as the script, the pace dull and boring, and even the music is mediocre at best. It tells a dull story competently; but nothing more. Colm Meaney meanders through the movie in third gear, while Andrea Corr makes a tolerable debut. Patrick Bergin and Frank Kelly have cameos that they won't add to their resumes. All in all, a poor movie that wastes what little it had going for it. Do yourself a favor and rent "The Field" instead.

Some films may be predictable, with minimal storyline and action sequences and still be a hit. THE BOYS AND GIRL FROM COUNTY CLARE hits that description on target. This is an emerald of a jaunty little Irish tale that thoroughly entertains with a fine cast and superb Irish music and leaves the audience wholly satisfied - AND has a fine social comment! The setting is County Clare where the International Irish Music festival is at hand. For years John-Joe McMahon (Bernard Hill) and his little band have won the ceili (Irish dance music) band competition. Members of his hometown orchestra include young Anne (Andrea Corr) and her unmarried grumpy piano-playing mother Maisie (Charlotte Bradley). Word comes round that John-Joe's long estranged brother Jimmy (Colm Meaney) has a band from Liverpool, a band that includes Liverpudlian types including young and handsome flautist Teddy (Shaun Evans) and is aimed in the direction of the Festival to compete. In fine Irish tradition the two mutually angry brothers try to sabotage each other's appearance, but alas they both come face to face in the competition. With Jimmy's arrival we discover that Maisie's negative outlook comes from the fact that Jimmy is the one who wantonly got her pregnant and Anne is Jimmy's daughter. Maisie is forced to admit to Anne her betrayal of ancestry news and the mother/daughter relationship is strained to the breaking point.Anne and Teddy (naturally) fall for each other and the two of them decide to return to Liverpool after the festival ends with neither's band the winner. This development is threatening to Maisie and she finally confronts Jimmy with her pent up resentment and disappointment. How the young ones cope with their situation and emotions and resolve the problem of distance is the finale of this sweet story and is best left to the viewer to discover.The acting is homogeneously fine with the comedy and drama in fine balance. And oh the music! Director John Irvin has created a little jewel of a film that warms the proverbial cockles of your heart. Grady Harp

This movie was trite and utterly predictable. The two or three "big secrets" of the film were transparent far in advance. I was bored through most of it, and occasionally uncomfortable due to some rather obvious overacting. Even the music, for which I had had high hopes, could not wake this picture up, though admittedly part of this may have been due to the audio in the theater I attended.I wasn't offended at all by the coarseness of some of the dialog and action in the film. I was, however, taken aback that its authors expected me to be entertained by it. There was also more vomiting during this movie than I usually care to see. Most of it on-screen.