My Review of The Snapper (1993)

 

Written by Roddy Doyle

Directed by Stephen Frears

George: "Sharon, please, I have to talk. I'm tormented!"

Sharon: "You're tormented? You've made me the laughing stock of Barrytown, I can't go out without being jeered at. You're tormented? You prick ya!"

If I ever compile a list of Top 10 Irish movies (and I really should at some point), I promise that this particular movie will be very high on that list. I've seen it a ridiculous amount of times and it's without a doubt the best movie in The Barrytown Trilogy. I genuinely mean that.

Had rights issues not been a thing, this would've been directly connected to The Commitments but alas they were, so the Rabbitte family became the Curly family for this movie alone. Don't worry, that doesn't negatively impact the overall story as such.

Our protagonist would be twenty year old supermarket worker Sharon (Tina Kellegher). She's just found that a drunken one night stand with her best friend's father has resulted in an unexpected pregnancy. Of course there's her own family to break that news to.

Ireland in the 1990s wasn't always the most progressive with issues like this but here, Sharon had a support system. Both her father, Dessie (Colm Meaney) and Kay (Ruth McCabe) accepted that they were going to be grandparents and Sharon's five siblings also seemed to be unfazed about her being pregnant as well.

Sharon even had the support of her friends - Yvonne (Karen Woodley), Jackie (Fionnuala Murphy) and Mary (Deirdre O'Brien). Except when it was revealed that it was Yvonne's creepy father, George Burgess (Pat Laffan) that slept with Sharon and was the father of her child. That certainly created an even split in the friends group.

Anyways, the rest of the film dealt with Sharon being something of a local pariah with tension in her own family before the movie ended up with her giving birth to a girl. Of all the names and in spite of her insistence that it was a Spanish sailor who did the deed, Sharon willingly chose to name the girl Georgina. I don't think she thought that one through to be fair.

- Sharon's siblings for the movie were Craig (Eanna MacLiam), Darren (Colm O'Byrne), Sonny (Peter Rowan), Lisa (Joanne Gerard) and Kimberley (Ciara Duffy).

- Brendan Gleeson popped up as Dessie's well meaning but slightly dim friend, Lester. 

- Standout music: Lick The Tins Can't Help Falling In Love.

- Chronology: Set in 1990s Barrytown, Dublin. The book came out in 1990 itself.

I absolutely love The Snapper. Yes, it's a topical film that came out at a rather pivotal time in Ireland but it's also a deeply funny and heartfelt movie as well. Both Tina Kellegher and Colm Meaney are brilliant throughout the whole thing.

Rating: 9 out of 10