March 8–15, 2001

movie shorts

When Brendan Met Trudy

The first screenplay by frequently-adapted novelist Roddy Doyle (The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van) is a winky, insufferable farce that doesn’t come close to measuring up to its author’s prose, or the cinematic versions thereof. First problem: Brendan (Peter McDonald) is a film buff, which means all sorts of coy allusions to films as over-referenced as Sunset Blvd. and Breathless, all accomplished with a smug sense of self-satisfaction, as if no one’d ever thought of the idea before. Trudy (Flora Montgomery) is a flirty cat burglar who also makes off with Brendan’s affections, showing him there’s more to life than John Ford Westerns and choir practice. (He’s a schoolteacher as well, just in case his general wimpiness weren’t clear enough.) The two meet cute, separate cute, and reunite cute; the overall feeling is like having a candy cane driven into your brain.

—Sam Adams