MYSTICS

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: language, supernatural elements

Rated:

It has been said that I have my great, great grandfather's Irish sense of humor. Perhaps that is why independent Irish productions have always appealed to me, both for their setting and the fact that their zany way of looking at life is just up my ally.

Squeezed into a little flat above the local pub, best friends Dave (David Kelly) and Locky (Milo O'Shea) make a fairly decent living by conning people into believing Dave is a psychic. Harkening back to his earlier days working in a traveling side show, he dons his sparkling robes and assumes an appropriately vacant expression while Locky hides in the crawl space above along with a lot of expensive sterio equipment, and reassures people that they really are talking to grandpa from beyond the grave. No one except their devoted clients take them too seriously, and they make a few bob at it, so what's the harm? Or so they think, until they discover their con has become too popular in town and drawn the attention of Foxy (Maria Doyle Kennedy), the newly widowed mob boss. With her husband barely cold in the ground, and the diamonds from his last caper missing, she will do anything to find out where he hid them.

Terrified to pull one over on her lest they wind up as part of her impressive body count, Locky and Dave try and come up with a way out of this mess but only wind up getting in deeper when "Bic Mac" actually does make an appearance at his séance. Suddenly, poor Dave really is stuck playing messenger boy for the mob, and that attracts the unwanted attention of not only the local police inspector (Liam Cunningham) but the opposing Irish mafia as well. The result is two hours of combined hilarity and high jinks as we discover just about everyone has an ulterior motive or something to hide. I haven't had this much fun curled up in front of the telly in a long time!

As the viewer navigates all the twists and turns that make up a fairly complicated plot, we find ourselves rooting for most of the characters. First, we love the two little old con men caught up in one big mess. We like their dog. We also love Foxy in all her deviousness, and cannot help hoping the Police Inspector can turn her away from her life of crime because, well, it's obvious he carries a torch for her. The acting is very good and there are a lot of great comical performances, as well various sinister ones. I'd never seen Maria Doyle Kennedy in such a sweetly menacing role before, and it suited her more than I'd care to admit. Plus, from a moderate standpoint, it doesn't have too much offensive content in it. There are several f-words (but the Irish don't exactly say them the way we do...) and one or two abuses of Jesus' name.

Foxy's boyfriend is carrying on an affair with her daughter in law under her nose. The two are shown briefly in their underclothes making out in a bedroom before the camera pans away. The inspector spies on Foxy in a women's department store, and is accused of being a peeping tom. Her daughter winds up as a madam in a "massage parlor." Dave and Locky do con people by pretending to be able to communicate with the dead, but that's all a joke until Dave really does make contact with the "underworld." Big Mac speaks on numerous occasions, while Dave sits there with his mouth hanging open. 

Normally movies about mediums tread a little too near demonic activity for my taste, but this one did not seem to have a dark undercurrent to it. For the most part, it was depicted for laughs. ("Maybe I really am a psycho!" Dave pronounces happily.) Unfortunately, you cannot rent this film in the United States because it never made it across the pond. But if you can get your hands on it cheap and have a player that can handle it, or even if you live abroad, it's well worth a rental just for kicks. If nothing else, it's wonderful fun to see O'Shea and Kelly at their comedic best.