Hi, we're Nancy and Barbara, and we have been movie buddies for four years. We go almost every week, almost always on a Thursday.

This Thursday we saw "Breakfast on Pluto," Neil Jordan's picaresque tale of young Patrick "Kitten" Brady (Golden Globes nominee Cillian Murphy). Kitten has a spray of dark curls, like a slipped halo, and a fondness for platform heels and feather boas. But the Irish lad's real passion is his search for the mother who abandoned him. From the days of Mitzi Gaynor to the years of Margaret Thatcher, Kitten journeys amid music, mayhem and magic.

Barbara: I don't know about you, Nancy, but if a movie can make me tear up at Bobby Goldsboro's schlocky "Honey"...

Nancy: That terrific soundtrack does take you back to a sweeter time. That's the beauty of the movie. Jordan shines at showing us the underbelly of society. And here he send the soft, vulnerable Kitten into the arms of Ireland's and England's baddest and oddest. Our unlikely hero navigates with an eerie calm. I loved Kitten, and Jordan's intertwining of the sentimental and the shocking. And though the movie was long, you truly care about Kitten's fate.

Don't you love Cillian Murphy? And the supporting case was great: the always sexy Liam Neeson; Stephen Rea of "The Crying Game," in a neat twist on that role; and Gavin Friday as Billy Hatchet, the last person you'd imagine would be smitten with Kitten.

Barbara: I loved, too, Jordan's eye: Kitten emerging from the Thames in a sea of umbrellas to a dark London, Kitten wide-eyed at the city that never sleeps, although it might wink. And the gaudy, although moving, "confession" between priest and boy at a peep show.

Too long, yes, indeed. Too many plot elements, probably. But "Pluto" sings.

Posted by Barbara Page at 10:40 AM | Permalink