Puckoon

Spike Milligan was one of the funniest men I've ever seen, and a huge influence on my life.

This movie is limp and awful, and does his memory no credit. The script is cluttered and preserves too many lines from the book intact (the leg jokes here are incomprehensible). The actors' performances are uniformly ineffective, a great cast wasted, and the lead, Sean Hughes, delivers Milligan's belligerent hostilities in a plaintive whine, which misses the point completely.

The gentle pacing is a killer as well. Farce should accelerate towards the end. The Goon Shows often did, the novel "Puckoon" definitely did, but this film, if anything, slows down just when you want the various elements to smash together in a final climax.

Milligan narrated an abridged audio recording of "Puckoon" in 1980, with T.P. McKenna, Dermot Kelly, Norma Ronald and Jack Hobbs. Now, that's funny. Ten minutes of that is funnier than this whole film. I believe the LP was transferred to CD, but don't know if it's still in print.

There is a movie of "Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall" with Jim Dale and Arthur Lowe. It too is a godawful mess, but it's funnier than this thing.

It's possible that Milligan's spirit is too rambunctious for the screen. The other reviewers here are indulging in politeness and wishful thinking. This film fumbles virtually every opportunity and never misses a chance to disappoint.

Fantastically funny with a serious message at its heart. Director Terence Ryan has captured the bright infectious humour of Milligan's comic novel and balanced it with the darker political message of the partition of Ireland.

I hope, from his seat on Heaven's comedic throne, Spike Milligan can see and can enjoy this film, as Terence Ryan and Ken Tuohy have taken a book that the author himself said writing it "nearly turned me mad" into a joy to watch.

The film tells the story of the Irish town of Puckoon and the problems befallen upon it when the partition between Northern Ireland and the Republic is drawn up, cutting its way through the centre of the village and, more worringly, through the middle of the churchyard. This causes some deceased, buried in the Catholic churchyard, to now be in the Protestant north - and so the local priest, assisted by a wide variety of eccentric locals, aims to move the bodies back undercover of darkness, and so avoiding the bureaucratic British border guards.

It was inspired work to cast the Irish comedian and poet Sean Hughes to play the part of Madigan. He brings an innocence to the part, especially in his to-camera pieces (which is normally where he interacts with the voiceover of Richard Attenborough, playing supposedly the writer/director of the film). Daragh O'Malley playing Father Rudden is also worthy of considerable praise; and the rest of the cast, from the household names like Elliott Gould and Griff Rhys Jones to people with what would normally be called 'bit parts' - such as Spike's daughter Jane who plays Madigan's wife give 100% The credit for this goes, in no small part, to the wonderful characterisations given by Spike in the original book.

I could argue that the film is slightly too long, or that Elliott Gould's Irish accent left a little to be desired, but those would be only minor points and take nothing away from the excellence of this film.

At last Puckoon has been made into a wonderful, mesmerizing film. This is a film that every Milligan fan will want to see many times, if just to catch everything that happens in each scene. The script has cleverly constructed in layers, the surface being the fast paced comedy and the deeper layers showing what happens to ordinary people, like the villagers of Puckoon, when their country is suddenly and arbitrarily divided

Directed and narrated by Richard Attenborough, Puckoon is an adaption of Spike Milligan's humorous book about an Irish village where the border between the six Ulster counties and what was then called the Irish Free State. I doubt that anyone on this side of the pond would know anyone in the cast other than Elliott Gould who plays the village Jewish doctor like he might have been understudying Paul Muni from The Last Angry Man. Gould's kind of artificially grafted into the proceedings and he really doesn't serve any purpose.

The main character is played by Sean Hughes and he's the village lout who avoids work like it was a bill collector. Somehow some way Hughes gums up everything he gets involved in, including the boundary commission where the line in Puckoon takes all kinds of crazy twists and turns.

You probably have to be a bit up on Irish history to appreciate most of this picture. Still there is enough physical comedy in it and that language is universal.

Puckoon is amusing enough and recommended, but for a select audience.