A long, strange, trip down the memory lane of 1970s Ireland, Breakfast on Pluto is director Neil Jordan's delightfully curious ode to his homeland, and to the joys of growing up weird in a place that has no use for outsiders.
This is a distinctly bittersweet tale told with a snap and a zany lilt, an allegory of sorts (complete with chapter headings like "In Which I am Abandoned") starring a spunky, cross-dressing Irish orphan named Patrick — later self-christened Kitten (Cillian Murphy). Breakfast on Pluto is a virtual tour, albeit a gleefully deranged one, through Irish culture, history and politics of the 1970s, as Kitten makes his/her way through the world, hooking up with glam bands, armed revolutionaries, hookers, magicians and sadists.
Just when you think you've got it all figured out, the movie throws in some hallucinogenic sequence or a Greek chorus of digitized birds, and the spot-on soundtrack (Dusty Springfield, T. Rex and Bobby Goldsboro, just to name a few) only adds to the fun. At 136 minutes, you could argue the film is a bit overlong, but not by much. Breakfast on Pluto is as telling a portrait of time and place as Jordan's brilliant Butcher Boy (also written by Patrick McCabe, and a sort of companion piece to this film), but it's even more spectacular as pure entertainment. Also stars Ruth Negga, Stephen Rea, Brendan Gleeson and Liam Neeson.
This article appears in Jan 11-17, 2006.