PUCKOON
UK, 2002, 82 minutes, Colour.
Sean Hughes, Daragh O’ Malley, Elliot Gould, Richard Attenborough, Nikolas Grace, John Lynch, Griff Rhys Jones, Milo O’ Shea, David Kelly, Freddie Jones.
Directed by Terry Ryan
Spike Milligan was one of the great eccentrics and one of the great comics. His major successes were on the radio, especially with the still-repeated The Goons and on paper with his anarchic books. He enjoyed witty wordplay and funny non-sequiturs. Prone to depression, he also had the satirist's desire and demand for society to be better than it ever could be.
His work does not transfer so well to the screen - with other writers adapting Milligan's style and with other actors voicing his lines with different emphases, intonations and timing. And, perhaps, they are best visualised by the mind's eye as they are heard or read.
Puckoon is Terry Ryan's adaptation of Milligan's comic story of a small town in Ireland that finds itself divided as the boundary markers set the border between Ulster and the Irish Free State. On the whole, Puckoon sounds like a variation on Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood with the same kind of village characters presented in verbal sketches and visual impressions. It has to be said that Thomas's Welsh lilt and poetic tones are more telling and humorous that Milligan's Irish blarney. And the Irish seem rather a stupid and crass lot compared with their Welsh counterparts. All the old caricatures and cliches are there (many of which are funny nonetheless despite their being sometimes obvious and predictable).
But Milligan is also concerned about Ireland itself. Clearly on the side of the Irish Free State of the 20s and 30s, he lampoons the British military and police (more caricatured than the Irish) and highlights the patriotism and bigotry that have fuelled disagreement for decades (and centuries). It is very surprising to find in the final credits that the film was largely financed and shot in Northern Ireland.
The film opens with Richard Attenborough reading a text on the radio and then turning into the God-like director of the film with the power to converse with his characters, change their plot behaviour and introduce music and signs in the heavens at will. Sean Hughes, from Will and Grace, has been imported to be the oafish hero, Dan Madigan, as has Elliot Gould to play the Irish- Jewish local doctor. Various Irish actors like John Lynch and David Kelly lead the locals. These include, of course, the parish priest who is also satirised, more along the lines of Fr Ted than Ballykissangel.
All in all, it might give the locals a laugh as well as annoy them. Non- Irish will complain that it is too Oirish and not so funny. So, it remains a curiosity item for the devotees of Spike Milligan.
