Waking Ned Devine (1998)

If you loved Local Hero then you will love this tale of a village set in western Ireland, who discover that one of the 50 odd residents has won the lottery. However at first they don’t know who, but soon discover it is the one person that didn’t come to the party. Poor man had died – of shock that he had won that much money.

Knowing that poor Ned Devine would have wanted the village to share in the winnings, Jackie (Ian Bannen) and Michael (David Kelly) hatch a plan to convince the lottery official that Michael is Ned as they pull a classic bate’n’switch con on a village level scale.

Of course, there is one that gets greedy and puts the whole operation at risk. Not going to give anymore of the plot away, but enough to say, the setup is beautiful and there is lots of black comedic moments. One particular stand out scene, keep an eye out for when Jackie and Michael discover the body for the first time and try to readjust his smile. I was literally crying with laughter.

James Nesbitt, prior to us The Hobbit duties, as the local pig farmer who is desperately trying to woo the love of his life, a local girl (Susan Lynch) who writes greeting card versus for a living while raising her only young son.

While set in Ireland, the whole movie is filmed in the Isle of Man, which substitutes for Ireland and Scotland on a number of movies. The tax breaks in this little offshore tax haven are too good to refuse for some movie makers.

The movie did fantastically well at the box office, with a budget of $3M it returned over $50M to the makers.

I love this movie and it never fails to lift my mood when I need some good clean laughter. If you haven’t taken it for a whirl, then get it onto your list as soon as possible, you won’t regret it.