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Holy Water (15)

Reviewed,Anthony Quinn
Friday 05 February 2010 01:00 GMT
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This jolly Irish heartwarmer is a close descendant of Waking Ned, with a slightly more risqué plotline.

Four friends in a quiet coastal village decide they've had enough of scraping by and hatch a plan to rob a truckload of Viagra and flog it in Amsterdam, where they believe all drugs to be legal. When an American security team, led incongruously by Linda "Terminator" Hamilton, arrive to investigate the theft, the culprits hide their stolen booty down a holy well – which then seeps into the village's water supply. Can you guess the rest? The gathering atmosphere of carnal abandon is amusing without being uproarious: you can't help but smile when a local drinker leans over the bar and says, "Make mine a stiff one." There's a touch of Roddy Doyle's Rabbitte books in its portrayal of male camaraderie and the frequency of the word "feck", though its parade of Irish stereotypes – godfearing matrons at confession, old codgers at the pub – will be too broad for some tastes. But it has the pace and jauntiness of an audience movie, and once collars get hot and bedsprings start to twang there's a silly sort of fun about it.

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