Journal Article

Mickybo & Me

Shields, Paula

2005

Overview

First-time feature director Terry Loane fully exploits the comic potential of the plot, based on Owen McCaffeny's original stage play, Mojo Mickybo, and draws two charming, convincing performances from the pint-sized tearaways (John Joe McNeill and Niall Wright). Full marks to production designer Tom McCullagh for the period detail of the 1970s, the clothes, hairstyles, furniture, stylishly evoked here (if that isn't a contradiction), an attention you might expect given the director's CV as theatre and film set designer, his first calling. [...]the final reuniting of the runaways with their families, especially their fathers, is over-long, so drawn-out and romanticised that it loses whatever power it should have to move, and robs the ultimate betrayal of Jonjo by Mickybo of its punch.

• Publisher: Filmbase
• Subject: Butch Cassidy (Robert LeRoy Parker) / Motion picture directors & producers / Theater / Walters, Julie / Wright, John