Angela's Ashes: 3 Damp Flys

If a drunken father, an atrociously inadequate social welfare system and a guilt driven religious regime will kill children then Angela's Ashes shows how it can happen.

Frank McCourt's autobiography has become a best seller. I haven't read the book but I'm informed that the film manages to include most of the incidents in what is a large, extensive tome. It seems that the book is both funnier and more moving than the film which indicates that it's likely that the film suffers from Epic's Disease.

It's very difficult to make a satisfying epic film; a movie which tries to cover an extended period in its characters' lives. The malaise of Epic's Disease becomes evident when we find that important events and ideas become glossed over; infected by the need to move onto the next phase of the story.

In Angela's Ashes for example the mother (Emily Watson) is forced to sleep with her cousin to keep a roof over her childrens' heads. There's a film in itself, not a minor episode.

Dad (Robert Carlyle) is apparently an alcoholic. But is he? Or is he just weak and irresponsible? Why does his wife put up with him as long as she does?

And what of Aunt Aggie. What's really her story ? We might be told in the book but she's not much more than a book mark in the film.

And then there's the never ending slopping about in puddles by the children and a repeated vista consisting of water flowing under a bridge. Vomiting becomes epidemic.

Director Alan Parker (The Commitments) has constructed a cold, damp and pretty depressing film which is nether the less reasonably compelling. Perhaps it needed to carry an umbrella, or to let some sunshine in.

The children, those who survive anyway, do continue to play in the puddles after all.

But then that might not have been the director's intention.