Review: 'Wild Mountain Time' is a magically atrocious romantic comedy, a ridiculous pile of forced Irish whimsy

Watching the strained blarney of John Patrick Shanley’s “Wild Mountain Thyme,” I could feel the spirits of my Irish ancestors laughing boisterously — but what they were finding funny wasn’t the stuff that was supposed to be funny.

No, this attempt at setting a romantic comedy in the Irish countryside is ridiculous for all the wrong reasons — starting with the opening voice-over of Christopher Walken, his Irish accent apparently pulled out of a box of Lucky Charms, happily informing us, “I’m dead!” If only.

Walken plays Tony Reilly, a crusty old Irish farmer who has left much of the labor on his land to his son, Anthony (Jamie Dornan). After the funeral for their neighbor, Chris Muldoon, Tony tells Chris’ widow Aoife (Dearbhla Molloy) that “I don’t see a clear path” to leaving the farm to Anthony when Tony’s dead. Instead, Tony intends to bequeath the farm to Anthony’s American cousin, Adam (Jon Hamm), a Wall Street sharpie.

Anthony is frozen in place, stuck brooding over an incident from childhood: While Anthony was trying to declare his love for one girl, Chris’ daughter Rosemary intervened — leading Anthony to push Rosemary to the ground. That moment has become a source of contention between the Reillys and the Muldoons, symbolized by the twin gates Chris Muldoon installed across the road the Reillys must use to get to town.

Beneath the family feud run deeper emotions. The adult Rosemary (Emily Blunt) is besotted by Anthony, and is waiting for Anthony to ask her to marry him. Anthony seems ready to do that — he’s got his late mother’s wedding ring, just for the occasion — but something holds him back. As Adam observes when he visits, “I don’t understand you people. Why do you make everything so hard?”

’Tis a mystery why “Wild Mountain Thyme” goes off the rails so spectacularly. Shanley has earned his laurels — an Oscar for writing “Moonstruck,” a Tony and a Pulitzer for “Doubt.” And his play “Outside Mullingar,” on which this movie is based, got good reviews when it played Broadway (with Debra Messing as Rosemary, and Molloy as Aoife).

The key problem is that Shanley’s attempts to adapt the theatrical rhythms of his stage work to the screen fall flat. For example, the American cousin is mentioned but never seen in the play — and giving Adam flesh, especially in the form of the charismatic Hamm, makes him less interesting than if he was merely a looming idea.

Shanley might have survived such a structural blunder if the other elements worked. But with the sputtering chemistry between Blunt and Dornan, the miscasting of Walken, and the thick layer of forced Irish whimsy, the flaws of “Wild Mountain Thyme” are too numerous to ignore.

——

‘Wild Mountain Thyme’

★

Opening Friday, December 11, in theaters where open. Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and suggestive comments. Running time: 103 minutes.