Wild Mountain Thyme: Film Review

Cast: Jamie Dornan, Emily Blunt, Christopher Walken, Jon Hamm

Director: John Patrick Shanley

Starting like an advert for the Irish Tourism Board with its tracking shots through rolling fields and along coastlines of the Emerald Isle, John Patrick Shanley's Wild Mountain Thyme feels like a film out of time.

It's a feeling further compounded by Christopher Walken's unmistakable New York twang given an Irish lilt as the voiceover to the film begins. There's a whimsy prevalent throughout, and while there is plenty of charm on show, the slight story is just enough to contain you for the 90 minutes run time - even if the deedle-dee-dee cliches are enough to set your teeth on end.

Anthony (Dornan, serious faced and furrowed brow) lives on the farm owned by his father (Walken) and next door to Emily Blunt's Rosemary, who's hopelessly in love with him - and has been for years. 

They are star crossed lovers of the most shallowly written kind.

But Anthony is oblivious to this - and yet matters come to a head when his father decides to sell the farm onto his American son (Hamm, in an entirely serious role) because he believes it's best for the future.

To say that not much happens in Wild Mountain Thyme is a major understatement.

While the film looks pleasant, and the actors are perfectly fine (aside from some crimes committed against accents and some truly unfathomable conflagrations of circumstance), there's a genuinely off-kilter mood that pervades much of the proceedings, as if the whole village has been coated in a kind of localised mania that only residents can be affected by.

It means that there are odd lines and declarations uttered by characters throughout, which make the film feel like it's either not taking itself seriously or has gone a little crazy on the narrative front. 

Either way, once you surrender to Shanley's adaptation of his own play, the rhythms make Wild Mountain Thyme an almost OTT surreal experience that's not been seen in cinemas for a while. And that's before the final revelation as to why Anthony has shied away from Rosemary's desperate desire for affection.

Whether that's a good thing or bad thing is entirely up to you.

All in all, Wild Mountain Thyme plays to some Irish stereotypes, but this romcom's surprising rhythms and solid execution make it a film whose lunacy is almost forgiveable - but sadly, it's also one whose accent crimes and narrative logic will live on in infamy.