arthurdaley69 Wide Open Spaces is one of the UNfunniest comedies I have ever had the misfortune to watch. Gerard Ring (Owen Roe) is a chancer of the highest order with seemingly an endless supply of failing get rich quick schemes. The latest of these being a 'Famine Theme Park'. Myles (Ardal O'Hanlon) and Austin (Ewan Bremner) are flatmates who owe people a lot of money after selling fake merchandise on e-bay and they land jobs with Ring setting up his park.Characters are introduced all over the place at random with seemingly no thought and all are idiotic. Inevitably disappear just as randomly and with little or no explanation. The dialogue is flat, boring and pointless. The plot is non-existent. The only good things about this movie are the Neil Hannon soundtrack and the fact that it's mercifully short. If you have this DVD and haven't watched it yet pop on the special features and go through them. The bits they have there are ten times better than the movie itself.

colinmatts Probably the worst Irish film ever made. "Father Ted" creator, Arthur Matthews penned this awful script and in the DVD extras he confesses to being "plot dyslexic". One is left wondering why a writer who is "plot dyslexic" gets to have his witless ramblings turned into a movie. Seriously, there are thousands of very clever plot writers out there who can't get a break. Anyway, there is no plot, no character development and no meaning to this mess of a movie. Yet, it brings together some fine actors. Gerald Mc Sorely and Owen Rowe are two of Ireland's best actors and its just as well that their careers are established because getting associated with this nonsense could really ruin an actor's career. There is not one proper laugh in what is supposed to be a comedy film. Attempts at Beckett type, minimalism fall embarrassingly flat. There are one or two Laurel and Hardy type visual moments which just look like bad impersonations. The pace of the whole movie is unbearably slow, so slow in fact, that at times it seems as if the director was making it up as he went along. I could go on and on but it really gives me no pleasure to be so critical.

billythehick i was one of six people who attended the screening, i was one of three that stayed to the end. i thought i was in the clear when the credits started rolling, but then there was more footage during them. i felt like screaming "end you bastard!"all fault can be landed at the director's feet. the cast do a fine job, the script hits the right notes, the sets are fine, but the whole thing is so, so, so bloody boring.then i realised that this was one of the most high-profile Irish films that year. then i felt so royally betrayed.just because your film has all the hallmarks of the Coen Bros, doesn't make you as good, or even comparable to the Coen Bros. Referencing Withnail & I doesn't make people find your movie as good as Withnail & I.

lav13 I'm not sure exactly what this is.It's like someone has watched a couple of Beckett and Pinter plays then a Carry On film and decided to have a go themselves.It's full of inexplicable silences and overblown slow prop mishandling. There's an over- current of drabness with a lot of very affected acting. There's the conversations that go nowhere and have no purpose. All of these things can be great, if done well... and a lot of it has been done well but still isn't great. There's a mystery here somewhere as to why this has gone wrong; it's hard to point a finger at. Can't fault the actual performances and it's an interesting enough story...It just somehow doesn't work. If I had to make a stab at it I'd say that there is something in the execution that puts a distance between me and the film. It's the putting together that's made the problem maybe.I'm coming to the conclusion that they meant to do a play and accidentally ended up making a film. I could see it working as a play, but it just doesn't as a film.