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A Film With Me In It doesn’t star me, but instead leads with Dylan Moran, Mark Doherty, Amy Huberman and Keith Allen.
Pierce (Dylan Moran) is an alcoholic – who doesn’t exactly get a lot out of his AA meetings – and also is a man who claims to be a writer and has an idea for a story about a man who is broke and, so, commits a crime, although can’t figure out what sort of crime it is. His best friend Mark (Mark Doherty, who also wrote the film), living in the flat below, is an actor who tries – and fails – for a what his friend calls “a bit-part in a crap film.”
Sally (Amy Huberman) and Mark live together with his brother David (David O’Doherty), who’s almost in a persistant vegetative state and in a wheelchair, following an accident on the rugby field. They’re about to split up over a lack of money – and the lies about him not paying the rent for the past three months isn’t helping. The cast is rounded out with a usually grumpy Keith Allen as their landlord Jack, Aisling O’Sullivan as a policewoman and even Neil Jordan as a casting director at the start of the film.
Tragedy strikes in all manner of ways, resulting in several people ending up dead within a short space of time all in Mark’s flat, all as accidents, but such a combination that just couldn’t be explained to the long arm of the law. What follows is something that could be seen as akin in style to Weekend at Bernie’s but happening to only one of the corpses – and with more accidents about to happen, will it result in more deaths?
You can only find out by watching and this is a difficult film to describe without giving too much away, but the bulk of the onscreen presence goes to Mark Doherty and Dylan Moran who go through the process in an unlikely but, at times, slightly believable way – well, perhaps believable for Dylan Moran, but always one that’s intriguing.
A Film With Me In It brings to the screen a good combination of drama, tension and some subtle humour, plus some good performances from the two leads and decent support from the rest of the cast.
Presented in the 16:9 (1.77:1) exactly, so I presume the cinema 1.85:1 ratio would mask the top and bottom slightly – not that it would make any real visual difference and in anamorphic widescreen, the picture is a little soft. That said, it’s well-filmed with good composition given to much of the film.
The only audio options appear to be ‘stereo’ or ‘Surround sound’, from the setup menu, but it is indeed Dolby Digital 5.1. It’s mainly used for dialogue, although there are some moments of tension and atmosphere during the deaths within – nothing that’ll win any Oscars for special effects, but better than being in plain stereo.
The sole extra is a Making Of (9:50), which mixes clips from the film with chat from all the main cast members plus director Ian Fitzgibbon, and for such a short extra, it has a surprisingly large amount of chapters with 15.
The menu features the main characters set against the movie’s theme. There are no subtitles, which is annoying as the dialogue isn’t always always 100% clear when the characters talk fast, However, the total number of chapters is a decent number of 24, like another Element Pictures release I reviewed, As If I Am Not There, so it’s good that someone’s giving us enough of these as most studios are skimping on the number with just 12 or 16, even over a two-hour film.
A Film With Me In It is released on DVD on October 10th from Element Pictures.
|
FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
7 7 7 1 |
| OVERALL | 5 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 84 minutes
Year: 2008
Released: October 2011
Chapters: 24
Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: None
Widescreen: 1.77:1 (16:9)
Disc Format: DVD9
Director: Ian Fitzgibbon
Producers: Alan Moloney and Susan Mullen
Screenplay: Mark Doherty
Music: Denis Woods
Cast:
Pierce: Dylan Moran
Mark: Mark Doherty
Jack: Keith Allen
Sally: Amy Huberman
Policewoman: Aisling O’Sullivan
David: David O’Doherty
Casting Director: Neil Jordan
Pierce 2: Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Casting Assistant: Laura Way
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.