(out of four)
By David N. Butterworth
The shenanigans of one Patrick “Kitten” Braden, an orphaned
Irish lad who favors stockings and stoles over dungarees and Doc Martins, form
the core of Pat McCabe’s novel Breakfast on Pluto.
And by turns this dark, revolutionary work has been manipulated
into a sprawling, episodic film journey by director Neil Jordan… that just
doesn’t cut it. (Jordan previously collaborated with McCabe on the latter’s The
Butcher Boy to devastatingly better effect). Breakfast on Pluto’s
too long, too cute, too forced. And the titles introducing each “chapter”
only help one imagine how this fairy tale played out on the printed page.
Abandoned as a mere babe on the steps of the local minster,
Kitten (“after St. Kitten,” the wide-eyed, curly-haired foster child tells
his despairing Catholic school headmaster) blossoms into a flamboyant
transvestite amid The Troubles of 1970’s Ireland, finally hitching up her
floral skirts and heading to London to try and find the mother he never had
(and, by design, the father he never knew).
As the brazenly androgynous Kitten, Cillian Murphy (Red Eye,
Batman Begins) polishes off a miraculous, gender-bending performance that
centers this occasionally worthwhile film. But, alas, it’s not enough. Jordan
gives Murphy plenty of room to maneuver but the film drags (no pun intended),
stifled by had-to-be-there revelry plus a poor choice of tunes on the soundtrack
(a dour mix of sour pop hits and lame covers) and bookended by a pair of
computer-generated dickie birds–robin redbreasts to be exact–that provide twee commentary
via spectacularly uninspired subtitles (they don’t work either).
With Liam Neeson as Father Bernard, Stephen Rea as Bertie the
magician, and Brendan Gleeson (HP’s “Madeye” Moody) as a Womble.
