When Brendan Met Trudy

Part anarchic love-story and part gentle satire on Celtic Tigerland, When Brendan Met Trudy is an off-the-wall, hit-and-miss but sprightly and ultimately winning affair.

The hero, Brendan (McDonald) is a singularly uninspired and incompetent teacher who finds his only solace in baritone renditions of Latin hymns and an obsession with classic movies. One night after choir-practise, Brendan's miserable pint is interrupted by feisty blonde Trudy, who introduces herself as a Montessori teacher - a position viewed with some scorn by Brendan's militantly bourgeois relatives, who sport 'MIDDLE-CLASS AND PROUD OF IT' bumper stickers on their cars.

Worse still, Trudy loathes all things cinematic or even vaguely cultural, and is prone to go missing for long stretches in the middle of the night, disappearances which invariably coincide with mysterious crimes being committed by a serial castrator. Against (or in spite of) this tense romantic mismatch, When Brendan Met Trudy throws up a multitude of clever film references (everything from A Bout de Souffle to Sunset Boulevard) and mad-cap visual jokes such as a pink-sash-wearing Gay Orange Parade.

Elsewhere, the film engages with post-Thatcherite (McCreevyite?) Ireland, focusing on a variety of themes from immigration to jingoism. All the same, the general air of light-hearted breeziness ensures that nothing is taken too seriously or dwelt on to excess, and the cast all play a blinder. McDonald (I Went Down) is superb in another variation of the deadpan routine he has perfected to a T, but it's Montgomery who steals the show with a performance worthy of vintage Maureen O'Hara.

One or two of the comic episodes don't quite hit the target, but the pace of the whole affair and its all-around joyfulness more than overcomes any objections. Mischievous, playful and impossible to dislike.