Ghostly Mama is a mess

Mama
DIRECTED BY: Andres Muschietti
STARRING: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan
Charpentier, Isabelle Nelisse
CERT: 15A

Mama began life as a three-minute short film that caught the eye of horror master Guillermo del Toro, who came on board to produce the feature. Naturally enough his name is being used to flog the movie, giving the impression that it’s a much better horror film than it is.
It kicks off with plenty of promise, though. A wealthy young executive (Coster-Waldau) heads for the hills with his two young daughters, leaving a trail of murder behind. They wind up in an abandoned cabin in the woods, where his plans come to a sudden supernatural halt.
It’s a fine opener, marked by some great cinematography and a lovely piece of acting by little Morgan McGarry. She plays young Victoria, who can’t see without her glasses and doesn’t know what’s happened to Daddy.
Five years pass without a trace of the girls but their uncle Lucas (also played by Coster-Waldau) has never given up looking. When finally they’re found in the woods, Victoria (now played by Megan Charpentier) and younger sister Lily (Isabelle Nelisse) have gone feral, barely recognisable as human.
They’re taken into care under psychiatrist Dr Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash), who arranges for Lucas and his irritating rock chick girlfriend Annabel (Chastain) to look after them in a grand big house.
It soon emerges, though, that the girls were not quite alone out there in the wild all these years, and that their ghostly protector has followed them to their new home.
They call this creature Mama and Lily in particular loves to have her around. But Mama likes to have the girls to herself and anyone with other ideas better be copping on to themselves.
With a good cast, a clearly talented director, del Toro’s guidance and a fairly decent idea, Mama could really have been an excellent little horror. After setting up the story so well, however, Andres Muschietti falls back on lazy old devices to tell it – moving the story forward with silly dreams, signalling the scary parts with moths and slime and funny noises, the tired old tricks of Asian horror that arrived with The Ring and have long outstayed their welcome.
He reveals too much of his monster, too, who has a genuinely creepy presence when barely glimpsed but loses that effect all too soon.
On the upside, he gets the best out of his actors, all except Jessica Chastain, who looks like she couldn’t be bothered – and with a character so annoying and shallow, you can hardly blame her. At the opposite end of the scale, young Isabelle Nelisse is wonderful as Lily, wild and almost mute, heartbreaking and chilling at the same time.
The real heartbreaker, though, is the climax but only if your heart can be broken by sheer stupidity. The last half hour throws any semblance of intelligence out the window and the cliff-top ending is one of the most foolish things I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness in a cinema.
You can save your cash by simply watching the original on YouTube, a single-shot scene that’s been shoe-horned into the movie to only half its effect. You can see what Guillermo del Toro liked and director Mr Muschietti will surely be around for a while.

The Hardy Bucks Movie
DIRECTED BY: Mike Cockayne
STARRING: Chris Tordoff, Martin Maloney, Owen Colgan, Peter Cassidy, Tom Kilgallon
CERT: 16

The Hardy Bucks passed me by entirely in their YouTube days and I never did catch them on telly when they moved to RTÉ. So I was looking forward to seeing what the fuss was about.
If you’re not familiar with them either, the Bucks are a bunch of bored lads from Castletown in Mayo, who like the drinkin’, the women and the craic, in whatever order they happen to arrive.
Chief of the gang seems to be Eddie Durkan (Maloney) and the rest include Buzz (Colgan), Frenchtoast (Cassidy) and The Boo (Kilgallon), along with the dumbest and single most annoying wannabe gangster in history, The Viper (Tordoff).
For their big screen adventure, the boys are off on a road trip to Poland for the Euros, but wind up in trouble on the way. In Amsterdam, naturally.
Here they get on the wrong side of some real gangsters and end up involved in an international drug deal. Which is all a bit needless and heavy handed, when all that was really necessary was to let the lads loose to have the craic.
The Bucks are very likeable chaps, the kind of characters you feel you almost know personally within a few minutes.
They’re harmless and hapless, and you can’t help but cheer them on. But, as is the case with most Irish comedy, the lads are guilty of over-writing the material, and overacting the scenes.
What they were getting up to had the potential to be very funny, but very little of it actually was.
I’m not sure the fans will all be rolling in the aisles. I saw this in a cinema full of what I presume is the Hardy Bucks core audience – hardy young fellas in their 20s, mad for the bit of gas. But I didn’t hear them laughing that much.
Maybe in a looser format, without the constraints of a weak script and a silly plot, the Bucks can hit closer to the target.