Director: Alex Fegan
Talent: Billy Keane, James Curran, Ray Blackwell
Release Date: 4th October 2013
Beginning with an intertitle quoting fascist poet W.B. Yeats: ‘There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met,’ The Irish Pub is, according to its press notes, ‘a eulogy to the greatest institution in Irish society’ from which it takes its name. What follows is an hour and a half of talking head interviews with various publicans from around the country in which they describe (with apparently loose guidelines) what makes each of their establishments unique. The extent to which you are given to the film’s central idea that The Irish Pub (as such) is a great thing and worthy of chauvinistic praise will determine your level of patience for such an aimless, drawn-out Bord Fáilte advertisement, but the arse really falls out of proceedings when Billy Keane (son of John B.) says, straight-faced, that Ireland is a happier-than-average country because the Irish replace psychological counselling with ‘thrashing things out in the pub’.
[Sound of toilet flushing repeatedly.]
