Memorable, crazy movie

hyped garbage

Did you people see the same film I saw?

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

A friend of mine said that this is a feel good movie. It makes you feel good that your life does not suck as much as theirs does. This is a very interesting movie as it is about mateship. Two men loose their jobs and find a rotting van which they salvage and turn into a chip van. They have absolutely no idea as to how to run a such a van, but do so anyway. The movie looks at how they struggle through their mateship in relation to the van.Larry (Colm Meanly) is a big mouthed know it all. It is his character that the movie is based around and he steals the scene in most of the movie. Bimbo is the owner of the van but he is pushed to the side with Larry's almost dominant character. The movie looks at the struggle that they go through and how their friendship begins to disintegrate with the van. Larry acts constantly without consulting Bimbo and this angers him greatly. Twice he hires family without even saying anything to Bimbo.There isn't much in the way to comment on this film for it really looks at life of two people in Ireland in the early '90's. Much of the things come out of the two characters and how we watch the friendship fall apart. It is an interesting movie in the way a couple of things are conducted, such as when the van is rolled back to Bimbo's house and a huge crowd follows them, signifying a new start to their seemingly meaningless life.Much of the trouble can be seen with the way Larry treats the privilege of working with Bimbo in the van. He is stubborn and sulks. When given a wage he begins to play union with Bimbo. He treats customers with disrespect and finds himself in trouble numerous times. We shouldn't feel good that our life is not like theirs, but rather look at them and learn about how we are responsible for what happens to us. We shouldn't go pushing others around and then complain that they don't like us, rather we should just not push others around, and if we do, then accept the consequences.

When Brenda 'Bimbo' Reeves is laid off he finds himself on the dole and irking out a unfulfilling life with friend Larry. When a 'friend' sells them a clapped out old chip van Bimbo and Larry decide to make a go of it and, once they have removed an inch of grease from the van and worked out how to move it without an engine, they are in business. With the pubs crammed due to the 1990 World Cup, business looks great and, as Ireland continue to win their way through the tournament, things just look like getting better and better.Being from Northern Ireland myself, I always find something to like in Doyle's very typical delivery and, as such, will always give the films adapted from his work a try. With The Van doing average business in the cinemas, I had to wait till it came onto television before I could get a chance to see it and it was as I expected, an enjoyable working-class fable of friendship set against the backdrop of unemployment. As such it is pretty good – providing good humour throughout as well as a nice build of tension between the two friends. What I didn't think it did very well was deliver something beyond the boundaries the film had set itself. By this I mean I had expected that the film would be more realistic whereas it really was more of a fable with a moral about friendship over money; it is not a bad thing that it did this but the film could have been stronger with it in my opinion.However, for what it tries to do it manages to be slight but amusing with a good little turn into the dramatic towards the end to set up the lesson for the day. The cast fit the bill for this type of material as well; Meaney may well have been in several big American hits but he is more at home here and he is a totally convincing working class Irish man. O'Kelly is just as good for different reasons – he is the same class but one who thought he was out; maybe you need to have lived around these sorts of areas but I thought he was realistic enough. The two have good chemistry and the support cast are also good value.Overall this is not the best of Doyle's films but it is an enjoyable little slice of Irish life – albeit very simplified and served up in a sauce of cheerful poverty. The script doesn't go deeper than the superficial issues of friendship but this still work well enough and they produce an enjoyable little Irish fable that is amusing as it delivers a lesson about friendship that is thankfully free of sentimentality or slush.

Booker prize winner Roddy Doyle , who started life as a school teacher in a depressed neighbourhood in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, offers us a vivid yet humorous slice of life in Dublin at a pivotal time in contemporary Irish history. He tells this story from the perspective of down trodden families living in a depressed yet resilient neighbourhood. What is truly brilliant about this film is not just the hilarious storyline or the magical performances but how it captures the moment when Ireland as a nation got back on its feet and began to embrace Europe and world with renewed confidence. The story is set during the monumental moments of the European Football Championships of 1988, EURO'88 , when the Irish soccer team surprised Europe, and not least the Irish, with their success. It has been said that this event and the continued success of the Irish soccer team in Italia 90 sparked a renewed confidence within Ireland which greatly contributed to the success of the Irish economy in recent years, now known as the Celtic Tiger. The Barrytown trilogy written by Doyle has given us 3 memorable film adaptations in 'The Commitments'; 'The Snapper' and now this the final episode 'The Van'. Roddy Doyle went on to win the Booker prize for 'Paddy Clarke , ha, ha, ha' and is one of the foremost novelists active in Ireland today. His comedy and dialogue use the often thick Dublin working class dialect, which add to the lyrical nature of the scenes. Most of the characters are in turmoil due to their circumstances and the comedy lies in their posturing with each other in a dead-pan, black comedy.

This is the story of two men belonging to the the Irish working class who after being sacked decide to start a business with a van for making and selling hamburgers and the like stuff. After a while their mutual relationship turns into a boss-employee one and things began to become worse until because friendship is thicker than money they began again to get well along with each other. The story is told in a half serious half funny way. It's very simple but not the less deep because of that. It's full of amusing episodes and details of everyday life but its very true, authentic and realistic.