Rent The Butcher Boy (1997)

The blackest of black comedies - powerful and disturbing - The Butcher Boy review by RP

This is the blackest of black comedies and deals with issues of mental illness, alcoholism, suicide, religion, child sexual abuse and murder - oh yes, and the Cuban missile crisis too. I just might have missed a few there.

It does this in an acceptable way by narrating the story of growing up in a small Irish town where innocent mischief, childhood friendships, and boyish fantasies come to dominate the thoughts of young Francie Brady as he grows up in a family where his mother is suicidal and has a mental breakdown (cue humour about going to 'the garage'), his father is a violent drunk, and his boyhood 'enemy' is perceived to be Mrs Nugent. And it becomes apparent that Francie is beginning to suffer from paranoid psychosis...

The film culminates in the bloody death of Mrs Nugent - but while the film tells a dark tale it does so in a way that makes this appear a natural consequence, rather than in a 'shock horror' manner.

An excellent film, powerful and disturbing. 4/5 stars.

Piling It On in a Small Town - The Butcher Boy review by griggs

The Butcher Boy feels like the kind of film I should like more than I do. On paper, it’s right where I live: bleak, odd, darkly funny, packed with Irish grotesques who look like they’ve wandered in from a national nightmare. The early stretch has real bite, and the way it slides between mischief and menace and outright mental collapse is unsettling.

Eamonn Owens throws himself into Francie’s unraveling with frightening commitment, and Fiona Shaw brings real pain to the film whenever it risks turning into a freakshow. Sinéad O’Connor as the Virgin Mary is one of those ideas that sounds ridiculous and somehow still makes sense here.

But the longer it goes on, the less it landed for me. What starts as sharp and warped gradually turns shrill and repetitive, as if the film mistakes piling it on for saying more. There’s plenty to admire, but by the end I felt more worn down than knocked out.

i enjoyed this film - The Butcher Boy review by pete b

after reading the book i sought out the film; this can be a bad move. however, in this instance the film i think works better than the book, whilst at the same time if u see the film my advice is seek out the book - each deals with the themes within in different degrees of weight.