Review: 'The Miracle Club' has really good acting, but that can't save a painfully sentimental script
There are some good performances and large dollops of Irish treacle in “The Miracle Club,” a drama about four women dealing with faith and forgiveness.
It’s 1967 in the small Irish village of Ballygar, and Lily Fox (played by Dame Maggie Smith) still goes down to the shore to put flowers on the small memorial to her son, Declan, who died at sea 40 years earlier, when he was 19. Then Lily heads home to get ready for the talent night at church, where she performs in a “girl” group with two other women in the parish: Eileen Dunne (Kathy Bates), a mother of six who Lily has known since girlhood, and Dolly (Agnes O’Casey), a young mother of two.
The surprise at talent night comes when Chrissie Ahearn (Laura Linney) arrives in town, just missing the memorial service for her mother, Maureen — who was Lily’s oldest friend. Chrissie hasn’t been back to Ballygar in 40 years, when she was 17, and she’s not happy to be seeing Lily or Eileen, once her best friend.
As we learn through the painfully earnest script — by Joshua D. Maurer, Timothy Prager and Jimmy Smallhorne — Chrissie was the young love of Declan before she left Ballygar for America, and both Lily and Eileen remain angry over her leaving. Chrissie’s memory of her departure is quite different: “I was banished,” she says.
The top prize in the parish’s talent contest is two tickets on the church’s charter bus to Lourdes, the French shrine where — according to legend and Catholic doctrine — young Bernadette saw a vision of the Virgin Mary. Eileen hopes to win so she can get a miracle, to remove the lump in her breast. Dolly wants the trip to help her young son, Daniel, who’s 7 years old and mute. Lily is mostly along for the ride.
Director Thaddeus O’Sullivan draws some broad comedy from the complaints of the women’s husbands about being left alone for a few days. Eileen bickers constantly with her husband, Frank (Stephen Rea), while Dolly gets grief from her husband George (Mark McKenna), who’s ill-equipped to handle their toddler daughter alone.
As the bus is about to depart, one more passenger joins the pilgrimage: Chrissie, using her late mother’s ticket.
The movie saves its heavy drama for the Lourdes trip, mostly tied up in various characters’ guilt over past actions. Lily and Eileen are confronted with how they treated Chrissie as a young woman, Dolly must overcome her guilt over what happened when she was pregnant with Daniel, and Chrissie opens up about an incident when she first arrived in America. Irish director Thaddeus O’Sullivan, a veteran of British TV, lays on the Catholic guilt and melodramatic flourishes with a trowel.
Even with such heavy-handed treatment, though, it’s impossible not to appreciate Dame Maggie and Linney for their no-nonsense portrayals of women who have come to realize they have no time for old grudges. O’Casey, an Irish actor making her feature debut, is a real discovery, playing the guilt-ridden Dolly with tenderness. Bates, unfortunately, feels miscast here, though she tries to make the best of things as Eileen is forced to face decades of bitterness and resentment.
“The Miracle Club” sometimes bathes the cast in its maudlin dialogue — one example is when the parish priest, Father Dermot (Mark O’Halloran), tells someone, “You don’t come to Lourdes for a miracle. You come to Lourdes for the strength to go on when there is no miracle.” Smith, Linney and O’Casey find the strength to emerge above the cliches.
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‘The Miracle Club’
★★1/2
Opens Friday, July 14, at some theaters. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and some language. Running time: 91 minutes.