Leap Year boxes01 ticks all the cliches: 06 27/02/2010, Damon Wise, culture, features, film, Guardian, Guardian Unlimited

Leap Year boxes01 ticks all the cliches: 06 27/02/2010, Damon Wise, culture, features, film, Guardian, Guardian Unlimited

Fiddly-no music? Check. Gallons of black things? Check. Forget the "Celtic Tiger," according to Hollywood, Ireland is stuck in the middle of last century

With leap year, in which Amy Adams flies to Dublin to propose to her boyfriend on February 29, once again Hollywood meets all these traditional Irish with a film full of cow dung, submerged in alcohol, filled with Catholics tutting and bathed in shades of clover that give even a poster of the sick, light consumer goods. From Far And Away, starring then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Hollywood seems to be more than happy to pollute the island with a feeling sentimental, Happy-Go-lucky drunks, and some of the most convincing accents known to man . To join the fun, award yourself 10 points every time you see an Irish themed Hollywood film in which ...

Anyone have a fight
The most egregious misuse of Ireland, however, so with tearful eyes that I swear I developed cataracts while watching it, by far, remains the high water mark of Hollywood credits Emerald Isle. Playing an exalted (is there any other kind?) Young Dubliner, Tom Cruise heads to the promised land with his flame-haired boss (is there any other kind?) Daughter which ends meet becomes obviously one bare knuckle boxer. In his spare time, he just built the train, after thanking a Bono song during the end credits of The Gangs of New York (U2 hands that built America).

You see a horse on the street
Although Angela's Ashes is more sad evocation of post-misery potato famine in Ireland, where the coal seems to be the national diet and sleet, paradoxically, it sends all took to the streets, Alan Parker's otherwise rather sensitive to commitments can not resist the Irish cliche: a horse on the cobblestones. Parker, however, goes even better with a horse waiting patiently for the elevator in an apartment block in a residential area, almost exclusively populated by scruffy ruffians.

Someone naively defends IRA

Stephen Baldwin actually did a tattoo IRA to give his character a "shady past", in The Usual Suspects? Mickey Rourke really did give the team revenue terror of his next movie after A Prayer For The Dying? We never know. But we do know that Brad Pitt only made infinitely rewritten The Devil's Own because it would have been sued for $ 60 million if there were, playing a freedom fighter bloodied but adorable joined the cause because the British killed their loved one father. "The script that I had loved was gone," Pitt then sighed.

Wanted man disappears into a parade on St. Patrick's Day
The legend has yet to produce vehicles of The Fugitive Harrison Ford just ran into a parade on St. Patrick's Day Irish city of Chicago strongly connected. Not very likely, but makes reading exciting as a grim-faced Tommy Lee Jones chases his prey in the marching band, maintaining a detachment from real life steel as revelers seem to cry "TOMM-ohhhhh!"

Fiddly-You hear nothing horrible music

The really bad rom-DRAM PS I want is the closest any of us ever get to a living hell, as Gerard Butler gurning sends letters of love beyond the grave to his beloved ghost (Hilary Swank), letters love that alert her to the simple pleasures of the land and the wishes of the Irish people. In the violins make a supernatural sub-cacophony Riverdance, driven by inflammation and Bodhrans pipes, the viewer is transported to a post-Titanic Irish theme park purgatory. As head of Swank is turned on for the sheep, Guinness and shots of single malt Irish whiskey, you can even feel his own head-turning, like the girl in The Exorcist, but burning inside.

Leap Year is out now

Damon Wise


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