The true miracle here is that this film was made at all. It certainly took a while for everything to fall into place. Something like two decades.
But that's the movie world for ya. Outside of the big-budget, major studio efforts, it’s a massive struggle to get anything from the page to the screen. Acquiring the finance, assembling a good crew, and then there’s the problems with putting a strong cast together. It's no picnic.
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So when you look at the roll call from The Miracle Club and consider that this is a 'small' film, it’s incredible, really. Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates, Laura Linney, Agnes O’Casey and Stephen Rea in this tale of working-class women in the fictitious Dublin suburb of Ballygar back in 1967.
They’re the names that will attract many eyes to this movie. But is it any good? To be honest, I was a little disappointed. It’s a solid tale about friendship, redemption and faith (or the lack of it), but nothing special.
It’s also about what Ireland was like back in the 1960s, when the Catholic Church basically ran the show. Well, with the willing support of Irish women.
They had children - families were massive back then - and kept their homes, while the men folk got on with whatever the hell they did before learning to cook, wash, clean and behave responsibly.
Linney plays Chrissy, a local who emigrated to the USA decades before and under a cloud. She returns for her mother's funeral, but ends up on a pilgrimage to Lourdes in the company of former BFF Eileen Dunne (Bates), long-grieving mother Lily Fox (Smith) and young Dolly Hennessy (O’Casey). The quartet all have varying reasons for making the trip.
Mark O’Halloran plays the local priest with a light dash of Father Ted, and the tale rattles along in an amiable manner with some laughs along the way.
But I couldn't help wondering if the script had been homogenised, as the story was originated by Dubliner Jimmy Smallhorne - a native of Ballyfermot, aka Ballyer - but the final version is also credited to Hollywood heads Joshua D Maurer and Timothy Prager.
Ultimately, The Miracle Club resembles a postcard view of working-class Dublin in the 1960s rather than an authentic period piece.
Showbiz, eh?
