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The Butcher Boy
 
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The Butcher Boy

Stephen Rea (Actor), Fiona Shaw (Actor), Neil Jordan (Director) | Rated: R (Restricted) | Format: VHS Tape
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)

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Amazon.com Essential Video

You can't write off Francie Brady, apple-cheeked hero of The Butcher Boy, as a bad seed and have done with him. In Irish director Neil Jordan's often-surreal fairy tales, bad seeds grow the fruit of subversive knowledge: A master of blending the everyday with the truly mad and wonderfully weird, Jordan loves to encourage charismatic anarchists--driven by amoral energy and imagination--to attack the status quo with extreme prejudice. Exuberant Francie (Eamonn Owens, making a splendid debut) is a thorn in the side of rural Irish repression and hypocrisy. Better to call this smart, too-sensitive brat an ambulatory Rorschach, an uncensored billboard of his disapproving society's uglier truths and fears. A nonstop standup comedian ("And the Francie Brady Not a Bad Bastard Anymore Award goes to--Great God, I think it's Francie Brady!"), he projects fantasies of '60s cold war paranoia (atomic warfare leaves his village a graveyard of charred pigs), American "cowboys and Indians" pop culture, and Catholic Madonna worship (Sinead O'Connor appears as an earthy Virgin Mary). But Francie's rich fantasy life is no match for reality's "slings and arrows": His abusive da (Stephen Rea) pickles himself in drink, his fragile mother edges closer to suicide, "blood brother" Joe turns Judas, and a punitive stint at a Catholic reformatory ends with our Gaelic Holden Caulfield tricked out in girlish bonnet and ruffles, plaything of an addled old priest (Milo O'Shea). No wonder Francie's ultimately driven to exorcize his own Wicked Witch of the West. (He sees Mrs. Nugent (Fiona Shaw), self-righteous pillar of a callous community, as the cause of his cursed life.) Laced with tragedy and hilarity, great beauty and horror, Jordan's adaptation of the Patrick McCabe bestseller mutates the adventures of Francie Brady--psychotic killer, performance artist, and purest innocent--into a sort of saint's life. --Kathleen Murphy

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Customer Reviews

47 Reviews
5 star:
 (27)
4 star:
 (12)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (3)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (47 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars the world goes one way, we go another. get it?, April 6 2004
By 
Daniel J. Bishop (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Butcher Boy (VHS Tape)
If such a thing may even be said, this may well be the funniest movie ever to be made about childhood schizophrenia. I don't know if I completely buy into other reviewers' interpretations of political subtext. I don't know that the world that eventually gets the best of the Incredible Francie Brady is even a uniquely Irish one- and what is probably the most chilling aspect of this movie is how "normal" life tends to converge with Francie's deepening insanity: the Bay of Pigs (clever story-overlap, huh?), religious mania, science fiction / cold war paranoia. These are the things that lurk in the world that make us look at ourselves and ask, "Just how sane are we, really?"
Eventually, as everything good in his life cuts away from underneath him, Francie (Eamonn Owens, in what might be the best performance by a young actor that I can recall) ricochets back and forth between pathetic and frightening. This film is one of those that is painful to watch, and we are inclined, like Francie, to start to dream of how it would only take one bomb to wipe out all the aliens and communists and Mrs. Nugents.
After we've been gleefully horrified and blasphemously assulted, the only real break from the movies' grim nihilism comes at the very end, where the only word of comfort is that God has a special place in his heart for the likes of Francie Brady.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Great. Release on DVD!, Feb 26 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: The Butcher Boy (VHS Tape)
I hope I don't use the term loosely, and at the risk of hyperbole and excessive adjective use, but this is a great movie. Hilarious and heartbreaking. It's one of the smartest, most fascinating and moving pictures I've seen. I can't think of a better made picture or a more accurate, poignant take on both childhood and dementia. Dark but not black, and neither cynical nor a shallow emotionally manipulating tear-jerker, which may account for this pitch-perfect adaptation never being heard of upon release in theaters. The young man playing the lead is stunning, the other actors excellent, the sets, costumes, and direction dead on. I later took the book out of the library, so blown away was I. This is, to trot out an old word, art.

That being said, release on DVD!

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4.0 out of 5 stars DO YOU LIKE DARING FILMS? WELL, THIS IS ONE OF THEM., Feb 18 2004
This review is from: The Butcher Boy (VHS Tape)
"The Butcher Boy" is a great experience for those who enjoy complex stories with multidimensional characters. Definitely this movie is not for all tastes, so fans of Adam Sandler's movies, fans of Ben Affleck's movies, or fans of "American Pie", please step aside, go away, we don't want that your brain suffers by giving it something to think about. The rest of us let's enjoy "The Butcher Boy".

Francie is a fascinating character: the first minutes he gives the impression that he is just an annoying brat, but eventually we can see that this kid is a very perturbed person, whose parents are an ugly mess, there are clear signs of madness in his attitude, and his huge imagination frequently carries him a lot of issues.

Eamonn Owens masterfully plays Francie, the average Hollywood child actor could have taken the story and the movie to doom.

"The Butcher Boy" is perhaps the best movie made by Neil Jordan so far, or at least his most daring film. Definitely "The Butcher Boy" deserves an opportunity, not all the movies should be made following the blockbusters rules.

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