Movie Review Evelyn

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Spoiler alerts – 2003 A very disappointing biopic, based on the true story of Irishman, Desmond Doyle, played by the film’s producer, former James Bond star, Pierce Brosnan. Doyle was an alcoholic, whose children were taken into the care of the Catholic Church after their mother abandoned the family. Despite his alcoholism, and lack of money for lawyers, Doyle fought against the courts and the church for the right to raise his children himself. The trouble is that the film takes a serious struggle and turns into very sugar coated Irish whimsy. It is so sugary and syrupy it could give you Diabetes. The blarney is so whimsical it just needs a couple of leprechauns popping up. Evelyn faced abuse and hostility from the nuns at her boarding school, but this is treated with good humour rather than the anger and social commentary it requires. Even Doyle’s drunken antics are treated as more amusing than a serious crisis that genuinely threatened his ground-breaking campaign. At one point he drunkenly steals a ladder to break into the school only to fall off the very high wall and somehow not break his neck. The film tries to be like Kramer V Kramer with none of the emotion that film conveys. Worse, Brosnan sings, a warning of what would come later with his role in Mamma Mia. The film fails to mention that after his children were taken off him by the RSPCC (Royal Society Of Prevention Of Cruelty To Children) and cast into convent boarding schools, Doyle did not start campaigning immediately, but only after a long stay in England. The ending of the film is particularly misleading. As Doyle wins his case, he opens the floodgates to hundreds of other children being released from church custodianship to reunite with their families. In reality Doyle won only his own case and loopholes he exploited were closed making the same legal path impossible for other families and the abuse got worse for many children indicating having hopes of similar freedom. Arthur Chappell