The Miracle Club Blu-ray Review
“The Miracle Club” is no miracle.
Set in Dublin, Ireland in the year 1967, “The Miracle Club” is an ensemble comedy-drama that revolves around working class friends and family. There’s the elderly married Lily who lost her only son, an older married couple (Eileen and Frank) who have 6 children, and young couple Dolly and George who have 2 children (including a mute son named Daniel). Lily, Eileen and Dolly team up for a talent show contest with the hopes of winning a trip to Lourdes in France (a holy place of alleged miracles). While all of this is going on, Chrissie returns to Dublin for the first time in 40 years after her mother passed away. Chrissie’s mother was good friends with Lily, Chrissie dated Lily’s late son and Chrissie was once a close friend with Eileen. As Chrissie returns, there’s resentment towards her as she hasn’t been home in so long. There’s a lot of unresolved feelings to say the least. Through a series of circumstances, Lily, Eileen, Dolly, Daniel and Chrissie end up venturing to Lourdes together where the trip turns out to be less about the destination and more about them working through issues and bonding.
Directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan and written by Jimmy Smallhorne, Timothy Prager, and Joshua D. Marger, “The Miracle Club” is a heartfelt hankie melodrama that is too by-the-numbers for its own good. While it does tackle important themes of loss, family, faith (without being preachy), and friendship, everything comes too easy in this story. There’s nothing to challenge viewers. It feels like just as the trip starts, it’s over (and so is the movie). There’s a lot of emotional conversations, characters with baggage, and revealed secrets here, but it’s all too overly familiar which greatly lessens any emotional impact the drama could have had. It’s just a collection of recycled ideas from better movies essentially.
The only saving grace here is the all-star cast which features Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates, Laura Linney and Stephen Rea and Agnes O’Casey. Maggie Smith could read a phone book and it would still be compelling. She’s just always that good. Bates as an Irish woman is an odd choice, but she pulls it off. Linney gives a sincere performance through and through. Agnes O’Casey is likely not a familiar name to many, but she steals the movie as Dolly. Hopefully she’ll appear in more roles in the near future. Sadly, Stephen Rea has very little to do here at all.
Video/Audio:
Presentation: 2.39:1 1080p. Grade: B+
Audio Track: 5.1 DTS-HD MA. Grade: B+
The lone extra is a theatrical trailer
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