Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie (2014)

The Gist:

Agnes Brown (Brendan O’Carroll) believes that everything is going fine, she gets up every morning and goes to her fruit and vegetable stall. The only minor hiccups up in her life are normally things going wrong with one of her boys.

But things soon take a drastic turn for the worse when local Member of Parliament P.R Irwin (Dermot Crowley) teams up with the Mafia and decides that it is time for Mrs. Brown and her Moore Street market to be sold off. On top of that Mrs. Brown suddenly finds herself deep in debt with the taxation office as well.

The Review:

As a film Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie has changed the art of film reviewing forever. From now on it will acceptable to describe a film as bad, very bad, exceptionally awful and ‘as bad as that Mrs. Brown’s movie.’ Yes Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie is easily one of the worst films not only to be released in cinemas this year, but to have ever been released in cinemas at all. This unfunny film even makes some of Adam Sandler’s worst films look and feel like fine art.

Over the years we’ve seen some pretty bad films be made after a producer has decided that a hit television series should make its debut on the big screen. Think about how good Mr. Bean was on the small screen, now think of how ordinary the Mr. Bean movies turned out to be. Like the times when this idea has failed the biggest reason for Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie to be bad is because of how different the show is to the television series.

Why the movie is so different to its small screen counterpart is a big mystery. All the key cast and characters are present, the director Ben Kellett has directed twenty-three episodes of the show and the screenplay was written by the show’s creator Brendan O’Carroll. But somewhere along the journey someone decided that the movie should be bigger than anything that had ever happened on the show, and that is where everything went horribly wrong.

Most fans of the television show will tell that they reason they love it so much is because of the witty one-liners that come from the characters but all that is missing from the film. Instead the film tries to go bigger and better with a big song and dance number at the beginning that seems badly out of place and then things go steeply downhill from there. The jokes are unfunny and largely seem to be recycled (oh wow a female journalist called Ima Bike, wow that is really orginal… not) and even the whole Mafia vs the regular person storyline has been done to death over the years.

The storyline is just the beginning of the clichés though. It seems like any character that normally doesn’t appear in the television show was written as a complete cliché for the film. Yes of course in a comedy you can’t really have the bad guys violently bashing or maiming people but they can be a little more menacing than the characters here and don’t have to be cardboard cut-outs of what a bad guy should be. And it’s not just the bad guys that have been written as clichés, no any journalist, judge or lawyer seems to suffer the same fate as well.

There are some ‘nice’ moments of Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie but they are few and far between. The film reaches its peak when it decides to surprisingly turn serious for a moment and delve into the fact that when Mrs. Brown first became a widow she was sadly forced to put her children into care. It’s touching moments like that that make the film watchable but sadly they are ruined by the number of unfunny jokes that clutter the film and make the audience wish they could do bodily harm to themselves with their choc-tops.

The Verdict:

Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie just goes to show how much comedy has changed over the years. A while ago a film like this would have an audience in stitches. But comedy has changed, seeing a man in drag and a tonne of jokes against minorities are not funny. Likewise the inclusion of bloopers and 4^th wall moments just don’t work on the big screen the same way as they do the small screen.

As a result Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie is a complete waste of time that has very few redeeming features. This is one film that you will want to give a wide berth to.

Certificate: 15

Director: Ben Kellett

Starring: Brendan O’Carroll, Jennifer Gibney

Running Time: 94 minutes

Release Date: 27th June, 2014