Themes: Eccentric Families, Expecting a Baby, Single Parents
Main Cast: Colm Meaney, Tina Kellegher, Ruth McCabe, Fionnula Murphy, Pat Laffan
Release Year: 1993
Country: UK/IE
Run Time: 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
The Snapper is Stephen Frears' adaptation of the second book in Roddy Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy. The Curley family is a poor but eccentric and loving Irish family. Oldest daughter Sharon (Tina Kellegher) announces she is pregnant, but refuses to reveal the identity of the father to anyone. Her father, Dessie (Colm Meaney), is supportive, but begins to chafe at the derisive gossip aimed at his family and his daughter. This leads to a confrontation between the two that is, like the rest of the movie, simultaneously funny and sad. The family waits in the hospital as Sharon gives birth to the snapper (Irish slang for an infant). The other books in the Barrytown Trilogy were also adapted into films featuring Colm Meaney as the father: The Commitments, directed by Alan Parker, and The Van, directed by Stephen Frears. Doyle had a hand in the screenplay for all three. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
Review
Roddy Doyle's book The Snapper ends with a very young single mother in the hospital looking at her new baby. The mother makes a noise. Another patient in the room asks her if she is crying. No, she replies, "I'm laughing." The film version perfectly captures the bittersweet tone of the book. Colm Meaney's patriarch embodies the film's attitude. He is full of contradictions: humble, but proud; the king of the house, but easily silenced by his wife and daughter; a complete failure as a financial provider, but a loving and emotionally giving father. The early scenes of the film establish the rapport of the Curley clan with an economy and clarity that communicates how close they are. The effect of Sharon's pregnancy on the family, Sharon's friends, and Dessie's friends are related in tightly written scenes that deliver a laugh and a tear, usually simultaneously. The filmmakers smartly wait to reveal the father of the child until halfway through the movie, and then only to the audience, not to the other characters. This leads to some beautifully shaped scenes loaded with dramatic irony during the last half of the film. This was the middle book in Doyle's Barrytown trilogy. Where The Commitments was more funny than sad, and The Van more sad than funny, The Snapper dared to combine the two in equal measure. A bittersweet slice of Irish life, The Snapper contains very human characters brought to life with beautifully nuanced performances, writing, and direction. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
Young Sharon Curley becomes pregnant, but refuses to tell anyone who the father is. She decides to keep the baby ("snapper") and her family, each in their own way, eventually decides to support her. Her father particularly studies up on childbirth and female anatomy (with gratifying results for his wife as a bonus).
It turns out that Sharon's friend's father, Georgie Burgess, got her pregnant by taking advantage of her while she was drunk. Sharon's story is that it was a Spanish sailor, but the whole town suspects the truth.
Production
The surname of the Rabbitte family in the book had to be changed to Curley as 20th Century Fox owns the rights to the Rabbitte name from The Commitments (1991), which featured the same characters.
