A less than totally satisfactory conclusion to the Barrytown trilogy

pwk-2

After the feel-good THE COMMITMENTS and the real-life THE SNAPPER, the third film in Roddy Doyle's Barrytown trilogy is a shade disappointing.  THE VAN isn't a bad film by any means; it's just that it should and could have been better.

The screenplay is by Roddy Doyle, which makes it strange that the Rabbitte family has been so radically restructured.  Jimmy becomes Larry, Jimmy Jr and the (marvellously funny) twins have gone, Sharon - the unmarried teenage mother of THE SNAPPER - has become Diane.  A large measure of the fun of the bustling Rabbitte family life goes with them.  Ireland, it seems, is no longer a land of "large families in small houses."  The same shrinkage seems to have happened to Jimmy's(no, Larry's)circle of friends.

Presumably this has been done to avoid distracting from the core of the story - male friendship, female growth, living with unemployment.  Oh, and football.  Easily the best parts of the film, though, are those given over to the details of getting and running a dodgy chipper van.  The end is handled oddly, though.  What comes over in the book as a vindication of friendship over money appears in the film to be no more than a piece of drunken vandalism.

But something has been lost - richness, detail - in this stripping down of the story.  Budgetary constraints, perhaps?

See THE COMMITMENTS for fun, see THE SNAPPER for its gutsy storytelling. Only see THE VAN if you really want to know what happened next.

score 6/10

pwk-2 26 November 1998

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0398842/