(rated PG-13, 94 mins.)
How can you not cheer for a movie with a premise involving a dad fighting for custody of his kids? Remember “Tootsie” and “Mrs. Doubtfire?” Now add in the element of poor deprived Ireland during the 1950s and you have a tearjerker heartstring-pulling winner. Based on one of the most historic longest-standing family court-laws, Pierce Brosnan plays Desmond Doyle, a desperate working-class father tackling government custody laws to win his children back from an orphanage, after his wife leaves him for another man (insert knife) at Christmas (twist it). Of course initially it’s an uphill battle when he loses his job, spends more time at the local pub and enlists his widowed dad to help with the battle. Evelyn (Sophie Vavasseur) is his feisty daughter of three children and Julianna Margulies plays Bernadette, who part-times it at her Uncle’s pub, advising and cheerleading Doyle on. Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rhea and the show stealing Alan Bates play the legal team in the custody war. “Driving Miss Daisy” director Bruce Beresford is a good storyteller so he manages to make this a save. Brosnan proves he’s got the “luck of the Irish” as he goes from Bond to this underdog holiday flick, even though his performance seems like he has earned his angel wings (overacting the heck out of the role in an almost sappy though acceptable way) before he deserves them. But if one could get away with it, this would be the story to do it.
