Mystics

Herald rating: * *

In the movies, comedy (apart from cartoons) has one important thing in common with drama: what happens has to be authentic and thus believable. And at the risk of sounding prosaic, I have to break the bad news to the makers of this piece of unconscionable blarney: the dead don't really talk to the living.

The idea that they do sustains - or rather fails to sustain - this lightweight and rather dreary comedy which discarded its only flash of wit - the working title Happy As Larry.

It stars the overexposed Kelly (the bony one from Waking Ned Devine) and O'Shea as a couple of pensioners who supplement the super by pretending to communicate with the dearly departed. The bereaved, for a fee, get to hear a synthesised voice relayed through speakers in the attic.

So far, so silly. But when the widow of the late local gangster kingpin, Larry MacMaster, turns up wanting to ask the dead man where he stashed the loot, things get uncomfortable.

If the two old buggers had simply said "sorry, no signal from the other side" - an escape option they traverse several times - it would have been a seven-minute film without an ending. So ( here's the really silly bit) the film-makers decide to have the real dead Larry phone in.

This sets up a crowded caper flick in which the MacMasters, a rival gang, and the cops are all chasing the treasure and each other's tails. It's all rather flat and hammy, a charmless comedy that manages to be entirely laugh-free.

CAST: David Kelly, Milo O'Shea
DIRECTOR: David Blair
RUNNING TIME: 86 mins
RATING: M
SCREENING: Rialto