Evelyn

Tone-wise, Evelyn is all over the place. There are times when it is brisk and lively, even rather amusing; other times when you just cringe at how syrupy and overdone it is.

A sprightly pace and a fatalistic sense of humor propel the proceedings over a generous amount of drinking jokes and other cliches of Irish life and culture.

Instead of the clear-headed resolve the material demands, Beresford's film offers slush, blarney and grandstanding actors ...

In honour of this movie, bars everywhere may wish to offer a new kind of Irish coffee called the "Evelyn": made with whiskey, coffee and a gallon of treacle.

As saccharine movies go, this is likely to cause massive cardiac arrest if taken in large doses.

For every good decision the film makes, a few mushy, conspicuously crowd-pleasing, or manipulatively suspenseful narrative choices edge in on the entertainment value.

The first third of this film can seem like a downer, but the performances are absorbing and in no time at all it takes an inspirational, feel-good turn.

While it does have its charm, and it does, it's a pretty bad, pretty hokey piece of fluff that never really registers as a genuine drama, only as an emotionally manipulative piece of dribble with actors that give horrible accents.

Did director Bruce Beresford have to ratchet up the saccharine of an innately sentimental story?