(IMAGE: Archway Pictures)
Archway Pictures, 100 minutes. Comedy
Grade: 2.5 out of 4
Contrary to what you might expect from the title, Love in Kilnerry is not set in Ireland. Well, it originally was, but budget logistics required a relocation to New England, without the sort of logical title change one might expect as a prerequisite. Perhaps it’s left in as a signifier that the movie aspires to be a throwback to the sort of ’90s-era small town Anglo-Irish charmer as Waking Ned Devine or The Full Monty. But presuming nobody’s too disappointed by the change of scenery, audiences should enjoy watching the town of Portsmouth, NH, in the lead role of Kilnerry.
Beautiful establishing shots of the town framed by snowy mountains in the back and the harbor in the front give way to equally picturesque small-town interiors and exteriors that should serve the town’s chamber of commerce well. Writer-star-director Daniel Keith was clearly given full run of the place to shoot wherever he pleased, and it’s to both the movie’s and the town’s benefit. While the maximum potential audience for a low-budget word-of-mouther like this may not number in the millions, it’s sure to direct some tourist traffic up that way. The only downside for Keith is that his location upstages him at almost every turn.
Give him credit, though – he’s not afraid to make himself look like a heel. While his Sheriff Gary O’Reilly is the ostensible protagonist, he mostly functions as a killjoy once the story’s high concept is revealed. A local shampoo factory has been leaking pollutants into the bay, and rather than, oh, actually stopping the leak, the EPA claims to have replaced the bad chemical with a cleaner additive that has the side effect of making everyone horny. As inhibitions in the mostly elderly population of the Catholic town go down, Gary becomes more uptight, pointedly switching to bottled water lest he dare express an iota of desire for the one and only single, age-appropriate love interest in town.
Essentially, this is Cocoon without the aliens. Or possibly a reverse Footloose, in which the protagonist is the only one ashamed of dancing – at one point, Gary takes a boat out away from town and starts doing one of those angry Kevin Bacon punching-the-air dances where nobody can see. He’s no Andy Samberg in Hot Rod, but he effectively makes it as uncool as Bacon didn’t.
Almost more interesting is the B-plot, in which the relatively liberal and young local priest (James Patrick Nelson) has an ongoing feud with the town’s mayor/bartender (Tony Triano) for reasons unspecified until near the film’s end. Their escalating hostilities, taken to even further extremes, might have become the movie we really want to see. But Love in Kilnerry takes the safer path of keeping the relative straight man as its lead, even as his motives for being such a joykiller seem weak. He just hates change so much that even his friends changing to become happier is a bad thing? Perhaps if the Catholic guilt were laid on thicker, that might make more sense. But Father O’Dell’s so harmless – except to Mayor Jerry – that it’s hard to feel religion’s in any way a joykiller here. Only the inevitably zealous town biddy (Sybil Lines) is any kind of fundamentalist, and of course she lets down her hair by the end.
Keith adapted the screenplay from his own stage play, and much to his credit, it never feels confined or artificially talky. What had to have worked with minimal props in a theater gets the best locations, from the water plant to an amply stocked country store and town hall. His soundtrack is burdened a little from first-time-filmmaker-hires-friends’-bands syndrome – the songs barely fit the mood, and it’s hard to imagine people listening to them for fun. But his cast members work very well together. They feel and look authentic to the place, and not like they just stepped out of their own headshots.
It won’t likely be remembered as well as its obvious inspirations, but Love in Kilnerry is just good enough to bring at least a slight smile to most faces. It’s easy to guess where it’s going, but the individual character journeys take some welcome side detours. And boy, is Portsmouth pretty.