Reviewer's Rating 2 out of 5
Disco Pigs (2001)

Pig (Murphy) and Runt (Cassidy) are two teenage kids from Cork with a passion for being different. Born on the same day, in the same hospital, and growing up as next-door neighbours, Pig and Runt have spent 16 years as the best of friends without a single care about their families, their schoolwork, or the law.

They spend every minute of each day together - even holding hands at night through a specially created hole in their bedroom wall - and can't bear to be separated. Robbing off-licences, beating up their schoolmates, and generally running wild, the deadly duo seem unstoppable. There's only one thing that's likely to ruin it all - sex.

Based on Enda Walsh's award-winning stage play, "Disco Pigs" is a defiantly strange take on the conventional coming-of-age drama. But, for all director Kirsten Sheridan's attempts to prove otherwise, there's nothing romantic about this couple. They're just two borderline mental deficients with a taste for violence and no thought for anyone but themselves.

Trapped in a state of arrested development - they watch The Clangers, pull down the trousers of dancers on the disco floor, and spout some weird form of baby-speak - Pig and Runt are so unsympathetic that it's difficult to care whether they manage to survive or not. The final reel's violence is so inevitable that it loses almost all its shock value, and by the end of the film you realize that no amount of "Trainspotting" chic or fairy tale posturing can succeed in making either of these characters seem the least bit interesting.

End Credits

Director: Kirsten Sheridan

Writer: Enda Walsh

Stars: Elaine Cassidy, Cillian Murphy, Brian O'Byrne, Eleanor Methven, Geraldine O' Rawe

Genre: Drama, Romance

Length: 94 minutes

Cinema: 16 November 2001

Country: Ireland

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