THE SNAPPER. (1993) DIRECTED BY STEPHEN FREARS.
BASED ON THE BOOK BY RODDY DOYLE.
DISTRIBUTED BY ELECTRIC PICTURES.
MUSIC BY STANLEY MYERS.
STARRING TINA KELLEGHER, COLM MEANEY, RUTH MCCABE, PAT LAFFAN, BRENDON GLEASON, STUART DUNNE AND RYNAGH O’GRADY.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
‘Are you all right, Sharon…? Are you all right there…?’
‘I suppose a ride’s out of the question…?’
Oh my God, I love this film. It’s a gem from the early ‘90s that I hadn’t seen for years and years, so when I found the DVD in a charity shop recently, you can be sure I nabbed it. After paying the euro to the old lady first, of course. The book is one of Roddy Doyle’s BARRYTOWN TRILOGY, which also features THE COMMITMENTS and THE VAN, each of which have also been turned into iconic Irish fillums.
It’s the story of the Curley family, as chaotically Dublin at they come, and in particular of its eldest daughter Sharon, who is expecting a happy event in the next few months . . . a baby conceived on a drunken night out with the girls.
To be brutally honest, Sharon is actually raped by George Burgess, the father of one of her friends, who takes advantage of a drunk girl too pissed to make an informed decision about whether or not she consents to the act of union.
But the movie is billed as a charming comedy, possibly the funniest film of the year, so I guess it’d be too ‘woke’ to go on about the act of violence that brings the baby, the little ‘snapper,’ into being…
The film follows Sharon as she first tells her shocked parents about her news, then her best friends, the ‘girls,’ with whom she has every intention of continuing to party, right up until her body tells her it’s time to stop. She’ll keep on working at the supermarket too, until it all gets too much.
Her dad Dessie, hilariously played by Colm Meaney, sounds off a bit at first, but then he gets used to the idea of a new baby in the family, though he’s not happy that Sharon, out of shame and embarrassment, is refusing to disclose the identity of the father.
His pals, including a very young Brendan THE GUARD Gleason and also Stuart Dunne who goes on to play notorious gangster Billy Meehan in Irish soap opera FAIR CITY, give him an awful ribbing about it, but Dessie will fight anyone who calls his eldest daughter a slut, so don’t you even think about it, right…?
‘What will the neighbours think?’ That’s a question that Sharon’s mum throws out there. It’s a question that would have troubled the minds of every Irish parent with a daughter pregnant out of wedlock back then, and it’s such a tremendous relief when Colm Meaney bursts out with, ‘Fuck the neighbours!’ As reassuring and refreshing as that is, though, it’s Sharon who has to bear the brunt of their hurtful gossiping and cruel stone-throwing.
‘Sharon Curley’s pregnant, didja hear…?’
‘She had that coming, the slut…!’
‘Who’s she having it for…?’
‘I’d like to see her fit into those jeans now…!’
Just wait till George Burgess’s daughter Yvonne, one of Sharon’s inner circle, gets wind of who’s supposed to have knocked up her best mate. Will the skin and hair fly? What do you think…?
In vain will a desperate Sharon try to convince her family and friends that it was a passing Spanish sailor who got her in the family way. Some secrets are clearly not meant to stay secret. And then the contractions start…
Particularly funny scenes involve a hugely pregnant Sharon doing karaoke to Madonna’s controversial ‘Eighties hit, Poppa don’t Preach, and a delighted but sceptical Mrs. Curley, Sharon’s long-suffering mother, benefiting (sexually!) from Dessie’s exhaustive study of Sharon’s pregnancy books. I think he’s discovered where certain things are to be found on a woman’s body, lol…
Sadly, some of the marvellous Irish actors who starred in THE SNAPPER have since passed away.
These include;
Rynagh O’Grady plays a nosy neighbour in THE SNAPPER, but is best known for starring as Mary to Patrick Drury’s John in clerical sitcom FATHER TED. A couple of shopkeepers by trade, they routinely knock lumps out of each other in private but are as sweet as pie to each other in front of Ted and Dougal.
John to the priests, after Mary has tried to drown him in a bucket of water:
‘Ah, Fathers! Mary was just, eh, washing my hair; she has such lovely soft hands…!’
Ted Laffan is as well-known for playing Georgie Burgess, the infamous impregnator of young girls, in THE SNAPPER as he is for portraying the mad, sex-crazed milkman known as Pat Mustard (aka the Hairy-Baby Maker) in FATHER TED. He died in 2019 aged 79.
Mrs. Doyle: ‘Father, Pat wants to know if he can put his enormous tool in my box…?’
Pat Mustard: ‘It’s too big for the milk float. I’ll get it tomorrow.’
Other now-deceased actors with small parts in the film include Birdy Sweeney, Cathleen Delany, Tom Murphy, Virginia Cole, Conor Evans, Robbie Doolin, Marie Conmee and even the stunning-looking-in-her-heyday Patricia Laffan who played Queen Poppaea in QUO VADIS alongside Peter Ustinov in 1951. I can’t find her physical presence in THE SNAPPER but she’s on the cast list, and these don’t usually lie. Not to my knowledge, anyway.
Sad that so many of the cast have passed on, but it was thirty-one years ago, I suppose. The film is so old but it doesn’t look dated, more like a lovely cuddly stroll down Memory Lane, what with all the stone-washed denim jackets, pints and chips with the girls, hailing taxis outside the pub in the rain when you’re almost too pissed to stand, then being sexually assaulted by your mate’s dad over the bonnet of his car when you’re too intoxicated to stand up…
Okay, yeah yeah, I ruined that lovely train of thought with my #metoo wokey-woke bullshit, lol. Enjoy the fillum, it’s a great laugh. Except for the… Right, right, not another word out of me. Over and out.
sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris 