A Film With Me In It

Rating:

* * *

Verdict:

Implausible, incorrigible, irresistible.

A sort of

Shallow Grave

-lite, this Guinness-black Irish comedy is lent extra appeal by its two leads. The always-excellent Moran is joined by Doherty, (also the film's writer) who bears a striking resemblance to

Seinfeld

's Kramer.

They play respectively Pierce and Mark, who occupy adjoining flats in a shabby Dublin house. Mark is an actor whose CV is as scanty as his prospects - in an opening scene, he is auditioned by a deliciously acid Neil Jordan; Pierce, meanwhile, is searching for an idea for the great screenplay which he is going to find rather sooner than he realises.

By a series of outrageous accidents and coincidences, the boys find themselves knee-deep in bodies by the end of the second reel (a paraplegic flatmate, a girlfriend and the landlord are among the casualties) and, reasoning that nobody is going to believe the truth of what happens, decide to concoct a plausible - or even an implausible - fiction.

It requires an industrial-strength suspension of disbelief to sit through the utterly charming nonsense that follows. At times, nobody on either side of the camera seems to know exactly why characters are behaving as they are and we're left with a nagging suspicion that they often didn't know quite where to take things next. That suspicion hardens with an ending that is neat enough but ethically, not to mention procedurally, suspect. But it's a cheerful shaggy-dog story that will be fun for fans of

Black Books

.

Peter Calder

Cast:

Dylan Moran, Mark Doherty, Keith Allen, Amy Huberman, Aisling O'Sullivan, David O'Doherty, Neil Jordan

Director:

Ian Fitzgibbon

Running time:

90 mins

Rating:

M (violence & offensive language)