Zonad

Starring :Simon Delaney, Janice Byrne, Rory Keenan, David Pearse, Brian De Salvo

Synopsis:

Ballymoran, a tiny picture postcard village in rural Ireland is in a whirl of excitement on the night that a comet is due to pass by. The simple (And I really, really mean that.) villagers including the Cassidy family are all out to catch a glimpse of the stellar event. On their return home they find an outlandishly dressed stranger collapsed in their living room. All the Science Fiction speculation at the village stargazing has put the astonishingly gullible family in a close encounters frame of mind so naturally they assume that the visitor is in fact an Alien.

He’s really not however. He is in fact a petty crook slimeball and keen drinker. Together with his equally dislikeable chum Gerry he has legged it from a sentence of penal rehab and found his way to Ballymoran.

But as the Alien Zonad, he is an instant hit with the village. Impressing them with his scientific and musical skills, charming the womenfolk… Things could not be better. Until that is that another alien arrives to challenge him…

Review

So to get this out the way from the start, this film is incredibly silly. I mean it. I don’t think I’ve seen a sillier film in my life. Well that’s not true I have, in fact I’ve remembered three whilst I’ve been writing this but I’m not going to name them because you would immediately make mental comparisons which frankly wouldn’t be fair. Because even though this film is completely silly, and I have no idea how it’s supposed to sit next to the gritty violent and often traumatic stuff we normally write up, it is also actually very funny. Laugh out loud funny.

This movie works because the whole thing is played completely straight. The make up hair and wardrobe calls to mind some fifties B movie story, or Blyton’s Famous Five (Costume design courtesy of Tiziana Corvisieri… masterful… check out Dick Cassidy’s sweater vest.).

The Cassidy family are like a cartoon poster for wholesome family values, and Rory Keenan as Guy is brilliant as the Uber naïve American heir with his high school letter jacket and preppy haircut. But the script just fires out innuendo, risqué sight gags, and out and out titillation without ever descending into unbearable farce. Partly because as I said, it’s always played dead straight but also because the cast are terrific people working with such vivid and idiosyncratic characters.

Don Wycherley as the Garda Sergeant is a gem. He pulls off a couple of the best comedy turns I have seen, in a whirlwind transition from Officer Friendly to a sadistic trigger happy maniac and back again.

Janice Byrne as the high school tease Jenny is utterly convincing and charming because she never becomes a two dimensional cliche. And Simon Delaney as the scheming drinking womanising keyboard playing ‘Alien’ is cringingly satisfying to watch.

Synopsis:

You will get over the whole, ‘But seriously, no ones going to buy that’ thing really quickly and without even noticing it, because the story becomes so engaging, and even though the plot seems a little montage heavy especially at the start, it’s well paced and tightly edited. Light comic relief, charmingly made. Silly.

7 out of 10 (Sulaco)

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