Stay-at-Home Movie Night: A Couple of Charmers from Ireland

family, humor, music 2 Minutes

With a critic’s score of 100% and an audience score of 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, how could we pass up a chance to watch The Young Offenders, set in Cork, Ireland. Here’s a brief summary of the movie:

Inspired by the true story of Ireland’s biggest cocaine seizure in 2007, The Young Offenders is a comedy road movie about best friends Conor and Jock, two inner-city teenagers from Cork who dress the same, act the same, and even have the same bum-fluff mustaches. Jock is a legendary bike thief who plays a daily game of cat-and-mouse with the bike-theft-obsessed Garda Sergeant Healy. When a drug-trafficking boat capsizes off the coast of West Cork and 61 bales of cocaine, each worth 7 million euro, are seized, word gets out that there is a bale missing. The boys steal two bikes and go on a road trip hoping to find a missing bale which they can sell so as to escape their troubled home lives….But Sergeant Healy is in hot pursuit.

We were not disappointed. The movie was both touching and humorous, a potent combination. The movie is currently streaming on Netflix. The movie was successful enough to lead to a TV series, of which there are currently two seasons. Here is the trailer for the movie:

This is the second delightful movie we’ve watched during our stay-at-home adventure that was set in Ireland. The first was Sing Street, which we found using Amazon’s “Customers who watched this also watched this” feature by typing in the movie “Begin Again”, one of my all-time favorite movies. Here’s a brief summary of the movie:

From director John Carney (ONCE, BEGIN AGAIN), SING STREET takes us back to 1980s Dublin seen through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy named Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) who is looking for a break from a home strained by his parents’ relationship and money troubles, while trying to adjust to his new inner-city public school where the kids are rough and the teachers are rougher. He finds a glimmer of hope in the mysterious, über-cool and beautiful Raphina (Lucy Boynton), and with the aim of winning her heart he invites her to star in his band’s music videos. There’s only one problem: he’s not part of a band…yet. She agrees, and now Conor must deliver what he’s promised – calling himself “Cosmo” and immersing himself in the vibrant rock music trends of the decade, he forms a band with a few lads, and the group pours their heart into writing lyrics and shooting videos. Inspired by writer/director John Carney’s life and love for music, SING STREET shows us a world where music has the power to take us away from the turmoil of everyday life and transform us into something greater.

With a critic’s score of 95% and an audience score of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, along with it being set in Dublin and having the same director as Begin Again and Once (another great movie), the movie lived up to the high expectations I had for it. Score one for Amazon’s algorithm.

Here is the trailer for Sing Street:

There have been some great movies to come out of Ireland over the years – I might need to compile all of them into a more comprehensive blog post at some point, mainly for my own reference.

Erin go Bragh!

*image from Screen Daily

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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31 thoughts on “Stay-at-Home Movie Night: A Couple of Charmers from Ireland”

      1. Ahh! You have Irish in your blood. 🙂 Very nice that you got to go a coiple times. I now know who to come to and ask about things once we start planning a trip. :).
        We had said we would go for our 25th anniversary, but man the years fly by, this December will be our 25th, so we will see! 🙂 Though thinking December is probably not the best time of year to go! I like warm weather!

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      2. I am 100% Irish!

        I hope you get to go for your 25th, but I would certainly recommend you strongly consider going in the summer when the weather is going to be a wee bit better.

        As long as you can find a pub serving Guinness and playing some traditional Irish music, your vacation will be perfect! 🙂

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      3. So you definitely wear green on St. Patrick’s Day, eh? Do you also personally know the leprechaun with the pot of gold?

        Thanks, Yes, summer is more like it and listening to traditional Irish music when there would be a must! 🙂

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  3. I’ll take any suggestion you have. I think I have watched every movie made since this lock down went into effect. Some of them twice. God what I would give for a good hockey game! Great post, Jim, as always!

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      1. I’ll try to find Begin Again too. Looked up Sing Street and it requires payment here – I’ll wait, as they regularly refresh the roster. Recommending is always difficult, as it depends so much on taste! Two I’ve enjoyed recently are Hunky Dory and Fishermen’s Friends: both would count as feelgood movies, both with music/theatre themes, and both very British!

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      2. thanks for the recommendations! I just checked and I can rent Hunky Dory but the other one can only be bought. Like you, I might wait a bit to see if the situation changes!

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      3. Sounds like a plan to me. They change the listings here fairly often and I’ve never yet paid for anything above the monthly subscription. Just watched Yesterday, which was fun, and saw Rocketman last week. Both good if you like stories around pop music: Yesterday is complete fabrication by Richard Curtis (Four Weddings, Love Actually). Rocketman is more of a biopic, but I enjoyed both.

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