The Luck of the Irish (2001)

00:00:00
Speaker 1: On thee cast, the questions asked if movies have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy, Zephy and Beast start changing with the Bechdel.

00:00:14
Speaker 2: Cast top of the episode, to.

00:00:18
Speaker 3: You, Jamie, Oh wait, I had to do. I can't do. I can't do an Irish accent. But that didn't stop anyone in this movie. Oh let's do. Let's do a wee bit of podcast.

00:00:30
Speaker 2: And guess I love that.

00:00:33
Speaker 3: I loh my god watching Ryan Merriman crash out over saying da instead of Dad, He's like, no, I'm Irish. Also, this movie is so iconic presenting Irishness as a disease, like out of Irish as a mostly Irish person, you know, I saw the vision. Being Irish is a disease and it's wow. Shout out to our Irish listeners. I think we have any we do, we do and truly like some of our I think longest most loyal listeners are are Irish. And Caitlyn, are you Irish at all?

00:01:10
Speaker 2: I am, I'm about twenty five percent Irish.

00:01:12
Speaker 3: Nice, so you're you're you? Gulds aer so a wee a week.

00:01:17
Speaker 2: I would say, I'm a wee bit Irish.

00:01:19
Speaker 3: I'm I believe, like sixty seventy percent Irish. I'm quite Irish. My dad's side of the family is all Irish. Sure, I guess, well, I guess. Let's start the show. This is a main feed episode. Well, welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is Jamie loftis Irish, so you can't yell at me Irish last name. Yes, I'm taking out my Irish card.

00:01:43
Speaker 2: My name is Caitlyn Derante. Caitlin spelled the Irish way exactly.

00:01:47
Speaker 3: Okay, yup, yup, yup. We won't be doing the accent. We only do that to punish our Australian listeners for some reason.

00:01:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry about that too, are Australian listeners. I might accidentally kind of slip into an Irish accent a little bit in this episode.

00:02:06
Speaker 3: That's okay.

00:02:07
Speaker 2: I beg your forgiveness, listeners.

00:02:09
Speaker 3: Look, I just you know this is my revenge on anyone who has ever butchered the Boston accent. All right, Oh yeah no, I really I don't know why, because I have I like have Irish family, but I just have never the accent. Has never leapt out of me. I don't know what it is.

00:02:28
Speaker 2: It's a hard one.

00:02:29
Speaker 3: It's a very tricky one. It's a very master But here we are. This is the Bechdel Cast podcast where we take a look at your favorite movies and today Ryan Coogler's favorite movies and take a look at it from an intersectional feminist lens. And we are in fact, I mean, it is the week of Saint Patrick's Day and we are talking about the two thousand and one movie What a year in film? This, Shrek Wow, end of this.

00:02:59
Speaker 2: Pretty much it?

00:02:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, a d com from two thousand and one. Kind of obscure, but in the news recently, genuinely because of Ryan Cougler, who is doing such an amazing press tour or like an Oscar's tour for sinners. He's just saying kind of whatever. The two stories that I've seen from his interviews that have gone viral are about this the Luck of the Irish and also about the Coke Remix Machine. Have you seen that story?

00:03:30
Speaker 2: Oh? I haven't seen that one.

00:03:31
Speaker 3: What's this? Wait? Hold on, I think I'm getting the name of it wrong. It's like the coke machine at AMC's and like Wendy's and wait, what is that called coke? Like the Dispenser ye January Okay, this is a Vulture headline from January twenty eighth, twenty twenty six. Ryan Kugler spills on love affair with Coke freestyle machine. Quote I got involved with that unquote. Oh he's so funny. I forget that. Ryan Coogler is like in his thirties, Like he's young and would have seen The Luck of the Irish on TV. We'll talk more about his history with it, but that's sure how this iconically not even remotely Irish movie has come across our radar, as it apparently had a hand in inspiring the Irish characters and sinners, which is wild. Yes, honestly brave of him to admit. Yeah, if I were him, I would have That's I appreciate when someone says something so embarrassing that it has to be true. I know.

00:04:35
Speaker 2: Well, the clip that's going around is him. It's at a screening or whatever. It's like a panel and someone's interviewing him and he starts talking about Luck of the Irish and then someone in the audience.

00:04:47
Speaker 3: Has worked on it.

00:04:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's like, that was my idea. And he's like, wait what, and she's like, yeah, I pitched it to Disney. I meant to look into that further, but I simply didn't even I was not.

00:04:57
Speaker 3: Able to figure out who that was. But I have read inner views with I'm like, weirdly well prepared for this episode. I've read interviews with the writer, which and you won't believe this. He he does not know a lot about Irish culture. What can you believe that? Can you believe that it's going to be shocking based on this movie's presentation of presenting being Irish as both something to be extremely proud of but not as proud as being American, as well as.

00:05:26
Speaker 2: Being present being very ashamed of it, something.

00:05:30
Speaker 3: That is a cause for shame, and it's basically a disease. I kind of it's such a mess that it's I'm choosing, and I'm so interested what our Irish listeners think. This movie is so convoluted that it's like hard for me to get offended by it because you're just like, I think the intent is good, but it's kind of impossible to know.

00:05:53
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we'll talk about it.

00:05:55
Speaker 3: There's a lot of there's it's mainly the colonialism stuff that you're just like, well, we maybe should have learned a little about Irish history before talking about being the power hungry king of Irish. You're like, well, well you have to go back pretty far anyways. Yeah.

00:06:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything is very very vague, glossed over, or just not even acknowledged it all.

00:06:21
Speaker 3: They're either talking about the Lucky Charms mascot or they're talking about kind of England. At a lot of points where were like, this is not this is like this is what are you doing? Anyways? This is the Bechdel cast. This is gonna be a silly one.

00:06:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, but what's your well, what's your history with this Jamie?

00:06:41
Speaker 3: My history with this baby? I have to imagine. I don't think I saw it like right when it came out, But this was shown on Disney Channel all the time, so I definitely had seen it more than once, I'm assuming, but not in a very very long time. I did not remember most of what happens in this movie. I just remember mainly being like, I have a crush on Ryan Merryman because he was just like a boy you had a crush on. At this time.

00:07:11
Speaker 2: It was he was in Smart House. Also was he not?

00:07:14
Speaker 3: He was iconically in Smart House and Final Destination three. Let's not forget Well, so we've covered. This is our third Ryan Merriman movie. Yes, and the Merryman a verse goes deep. I don't really know anything about Oh and he was in Pretty Little Liars, which is one of my guilty pleasure shows. I don't know how much he's working now, but he should be. He should have been in Centers, although I guess by watching the look of the Irish Ryan Cocher would be like, well, he can't do the accent, so maybe that's why he didn't get cast. No, this was a fascinating watch because this movie is We're going to try to cover as much as we can in the time we have, but it's kind of impossible. There's so much that happens. Okay.

00:07:57
Speaker 2: I so normally when I'm watching the movie, because I'll watch the movie twice generally to prep for the episode. Sure, the first time is when I write the recap, and so I'm sort of like writing, maybe pausing occasionally to like kind of catch up. I could not do both at the same time because this story moves so fast and so much happens, and none of it makes sense that, Like I was like, I just need to let this wash over me and I'll do the recap later.

00:08:24
Speaker 3: I have no choice but to say, like this, I don't know. There are parts of this movie that are incredibly frustrating, but it's so silly that it's hard not to be like, yes, time well spent. Yeah, yeah, So I definitely saw it when I was a kid. I did not remember really any of it other than this is the Saint Patrick's Day movie with my crush. So it was really interesting to realize that it falls into I think it's weirdly in conversation with another movie we've covered and another dcon that we haven't covered. And I'm gonna call this and let me know if you can think of others like family friendly, coming of age body horror, because that is definitely what this is. There's another d com that also stars a young man, which I think is interesting, called The Thirteenth Year, and it's about a boy who on his thirteenth birthday becomes a merman. And okay, I remember watching it another movie. I haven't seen it easily twenty years. I remember being like, am I having a Sexual Awakening with the with the Mermaid boy and you know, so there's that, But it also reminded me a little bit of a movie we've covered, Turning Red, another coming of age body horror movie. Okay, yes, I was just thinking that this is a whole sub genre. And then I was also thinking about speaking of Pixar. Was Turning Around a Pixar or.

00:09:55
Speaker 2: Was it just Disney animation either way?

00:09:59
Speaker 3: Brave. Yeah, but that's the mom though, that's the mom.

00:10:02
Speaker 2: Turns into a bear, right, Okay, I couldn't totally remember.

00:10:05
Speaker 3: What the plut Brother Bear.

00:10:07
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, I've never seen that one.

00:10:09
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it in a very long time. I think Brother Bear might be the bear transfer bait. Weird that there's too Brother Bear might be the one that's different, although I feel like Brother Bear it's like a curse or something which I would almost put in a different category because oh, this is like because my like you're I don't know, and I don't mean to like be creepy about it, but it's like my in Turning Red, it's the most explicit my body is changing and so I am now a different species.

00:10:42
Speaker 2: And so we have Leprechaun Merman and Panda and Red Panda. Okay, then there's Witches, where a boy is turned into a mouse, and the horror imagery in that movie, if you recall it, is really gruesome.

00:10:56
Speaker 3: Right.

00:10:57
Speaker 2: Then you have something like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which.

00:11:01
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever seen that weirdly, even though Rick Morana's could get it, you could crush.

00:11:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't seen it in a really, really long time, so I don't remember a lot of details. But no, I think there are a lot of wow movies in this subshote. This is a letterboxed list waiting to happen.

00:11:20
Speaker 3: I'm kind of into it. I mean, I think it's fun that it's not presented as horror, but it is pretty horrific. What is happening to this young boy throughout the movie? He's really I don't know. I just think it's interesting. Anyways, I saw this movie, I had no memory of how weird it is, and I'm very excited to talk about it. Had you seen it before, because I know you weren't a deep n kid.

00:11:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I grew up without cable famously, and so any Disney Channel original movie I've ever seen it was because I watched it for this podcast.

00:11:53
Speaker 3: Wow, You're welcome. I really do think I don't know if we ever would have covered this movie if it were because we've covered like movies by Irish filmmakers. We very recently covered Bantches of It Ash Saron, So it almost like this might not be a movie we would have gotten around to if it weren't for mister Kugler. So thank you, question Mark. There's a lot. I also like that he started like kind of a standing ovation for the woman who worked on the Luck of the Irish, and he's like a lot of kids in Oakland loved your film. It's like.

00:12:26
Speaker 4: Ryan cleg was fun.

00:12:27
Speaker 2: He's great. But yeah, I had never seen this before. However, However, like the character Kyle, I have Irish ancestry, and like the character Kyle, I feel not very connected to it because I think this is a pretty common thing in the US of white people with European ancestry, especially in I don't know if this is maybe like more of a small town thing because I've like I've met white people from cities who are like, yeah, I have this big Italian family and we're very connected to our Italian ness or our greekness or you know, XYZ country in Europe.

00:13:10
Speaker 3: I think that's just true of like many immigrant communities.

00:13:14
Speaker 2: True, but also like I don't know if it was like growing up in a small town where you're encouraged to like assimilate and like leave any previous cultural heritage behind. But I'm you know, Irish, Italian, I think a little bit German, some Scandinavians in there, and I don't have any connection to any of these cultures.

00:13:40
Speaker 3: So I feel like that that's so, I mean, it's like that's so much of what the movie is commenting on. I think, like at some points very effectively, other times not quite the opposite so much, but like it is interesting seeing that, Like where it reminded me of this was like, god, maybe five years ago now, but the conversation we had with Ali Naddy when we were talking about Frozen two about how and I'm paraphrasing here because this was half a decade ago, but she was saying that white people should be more interested in what their indigenous culture is instead of appropriating but nothing American culture, well not even that, but like instead of appropriating American indigenous culture, it's like you do have your own heritage, take an interest in it. Like, but but there is this like discouragement to do that. I think how many Because I grew up I would say, like, I don't I didn't know a lot about Ireland's history or anything like that, but I did grow up with Irish family members. It's weird to remind this reminded me a lot of like the parents in this movie kind of reminded me of my dad's family a little bit. This is pretty this is a stretch, but like my dad is fully Irish and every summer when he was a kid, he would be sent to Ireland to be with his family, but he would mostly be doing like manual farm labor, and so he was like, I don't like Ireland. That's where I go to work to Bailhey, I don't like it. But like he was pretty like removed from that, Like he experienced a lot of it firsthand, but like he never really talked to us about it, And I wonder why that is. I just I don't know. It's interesting to think about because I would like to know more about specifically Irish culture.

00:15:45
Speaker 2: Have you been to Ireland?

00:15:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been twice. I've been to only Dublin. I've been to Dublin to do shows twice. Yeah, I've never met my family. My brother and I are actually possibly going to be going this summer to meet some of our family.

00:16:02
Speaker 2: It's lovely.

00:16:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. But all that to say, this is such an interesting cultural like piece because it does sort of direct well sometimes directly, sometimes not interface with how estranged white Americans can be from their culture.

00:16:22
Speaker 4: Yes, I think it's quite which is which is not something I've seen explored in children's media before, So I don't know, But yeah, what did you What was your experience of watching this movie?

00:16:35
Speaker 2: You know, when you do not grow up with d cooms and then you watch them well into your adult life, and like, these movies and these types of stories have not been normalized for you, You're just like, what the fuck this?

00:16:50
Speaker 3: Like? What am I looking at? This sucks?

00:16:54
Speaker 2: Like?

00:16:54
Speaker 3: Is that kind of like that?

00:16:56
Speaker 2: It's exactly like that, I would say. But you know what is great about this movie is that it's like eighty five minutes long and so.

00:17:06
Speaker 3: Many such dcoms. Yeah, no, it's ultimately this movie is really it's I appreciate it on the strictly on the grounds that it's fucking weird, and I'm happy that it exists, because I'm happy anytime a movie this weird exists and people are still talking about it twenty five years later, that's kind of cool. That said, it's nice the movie is unhinged, so wild, it is so weird.

00:17:32
Speaker 2: We take a quick break and then come back for the recap. I'm so excited for you to recap this.

00:17:37
Speaker 3: Good luck, thank you be back. Yeah, we're back, okay recapping. We also, we didn't say what the if this is your first episode of the Bechdel Cast. Interesting choice the Bechdel test. You know, I would say, you know, don't worry about it. It's this movie does not pass it.

00:18:09
Speaker 2: No, you could yeah, look it up on your own time or listen to another episode.

00:18:14
Speaker 3: But there was one exchange that almost almost really close, but it was like between a teacher and a student and the teacher had no name, so oh swinging a miss and the rest is men having crisises about their leprechaun bodies.

00:18:32
Speaker 2: So well that okay, I I kind of knew that this was one of the many many not just dcoms, but just like family like kids movies in general, that centers around a sport, and often specifically basketball.

00:18:50
Speaker 3: This is not even the first dcom basketball movie that we've covered, too, because we covered the what was it like Full Court Miracle or something?

00:18:58
Speaker 2: Oh yes, a movie, right, and then High School Musical heavily features basketball.

00:19:06
Speaker 3: And we haven't covered I think a lot of millennial queer awakenings to the movie Double Teamed, which is a pretty wild name to give to a children this movie, but they but they did that and it's about twin basketball players. Wow, yeah, okay, yeah, because that was the other millennial media trend was sports and twins.

00:19:32
Speaker 2: Twins, yes, yeah, yeah, so lots of sports. So I knew that about this movie because I've seen the poster before and like he's in his basketball jersey on the poster. Yeah, I thought it was gonna be a story about him going to Ireland and then like, I don't know, doing something that far too simple, too simple, and since way too big of a budget. They don't have go to Ireland money, no budget.

00:20:00
Speaker 3: They really don't. Apparently it was shot in like Utah, like yes, because I was like, there is like a beautiful, like mountainous background. I'm like, where the hell are they and they're apparently in Utah for I'm assuming budgetary reasons.

00:20:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, what tax breaks was Utah offering in two thousand and one.

00:20:20
Speaker 3: We don't know.

00:20:22
Speaker 2: Anyway, Here's here is what the story is about, not whatever.

00:20:26
Speaker 3: I thought it might be.

00:20:28
Speaker 2: We meet Kyle Johnson played by Ryan Merriman. He's having a bad dream where he's at a school heritage day assembly thing and he's about to perform. But wait, he's only like two inches tall, so no one can see him. Foreshadowing alert.

00:20:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, Yeah.

00:20:53
Speaker 2: There's also voiceover from Kyle talking about.

00:20:56
Speaker 3: How a lot of voiceover from Kyle every time. Well, I think it is necessary, and they just probably didn't shoot some stuff they should have.

00:21:07
Speaker 1: Oh.

00:21:07
Speaker 3: Well, true, there's a lot of things where there. I was like, oh, I guess they just couldn't afford to show us that. So he's just saying it.

00:21:16
Speaker 2: He's telling us in his voiceover. He's saying he's talking about how everyone in the world is different and we all have these different cultural backgrounds that should be celebrated.

00:21:28
Speaker 3: But wait a.

00:21:29
Speaker 2: Minute, he doesn't know anything about his heritage. So he wakes up and he asks his mom and dad where their family comes from, and he's interested because of this like upcoming heritage day assembly that's actually happening. He's not just dreaming about it.

00:21:46
Speaker 3: He's organized by his crush.

00:21:50
Speaker 2: His crush slash frenemy girl, Unclaire.

00:21:54
Speaker 3: She really hands his ass to him so many times in this movie. It's so awesome. One time she literally hands his ask to him and then like gets up basketball in the hoop like awesome. Yeah. She literally she's like, you suck and then swishes, It's awesome, go bond.

00:22:13
Speaker 2: She does hand his ass to him a lot, but she also spends all of her waking hours like chasing him down, being like, let me help you figure out your heritage. I'm like, you have others?

00:22:24
Speaker 3: Don't you have anything else going on? She's a girl in a movie, Cayle, what's she gonna do have a friend? I don't think so not in this movie, no way. And then the twist at the end is I also, I don't know, I'm getting way ahead of myself, but like the twist at the end, being like she wanted to play basketball the whole time, I was like, oh, I was not picking up on naw But I guess good for her. That her the Wish. We didn't know she had came true question mark.

00:22:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Irish Wish. Remember that movie that I'm still petitioning that we cover.

00:22:57
Speaker 3: We should cover it, we should be Look, I if you're listening to this, it's possible that we are covering it on the Matreon because as of this recording, we haven't pulled yet. So yeah, if you're a if you're a matron, maybe maybe you've chosen violence, then we have in fact covered that movie at this point.

00:23:13
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, anyway, so Kyle asks his mom and dad where their family immigrated from, and they're like, no, we're we're from here. We're from America. We're Americans and that's the only heritage we need.

00:23:29
Speaker 3: I thought this was a really interesting again, like we were talking about, like, I think it's obviously super exaggerated because it's I also like that it's basically shot like a horror movie where it's like all fish islandses they're eating this like horrific, disgusting castrole and Kyle, my god, that was so funny. I thought, like this, there's moments where this movie is really cooking. I thought, like where she's making this like lettuce monstrosity. And Kyle's like, oh, is this like a dish from our from our culture, and she's like, no, it's just from a magazine. It looks horrible.

00:24:04
Speaker 2: Let me describe this dish. It's like plain spaghetti or glass noodles or something. Point is, there's no sauce to speak of, although.

00:24:13
Speaker 3: The but it is wet. It is a wet, slimy but it's just like.

00:24:20
Speaker 2: Glass noodles with like gelatinous globs of tofu or chicken or something, and then like random vegetables kind of loosely scattered throughout, and it served in this enormous bowl that's lined with romaine lettuce leaves.

00:24:40
Speaker 3: Like it is horrible. It's it's horrifect horrible. But I also I was like, shout out to whatever prop master came up with that, because it was it was really amazing. I was. I was so impressed. But yeah, but I did like that for a portion. And again, this movie, anything that you like about this movie will prove to be inconsistent as the movie goes on. But but I did sort of like the like that this like aggressive like we're not anything, We're American is presented like a horror movie, because uh yeah, that is you know, not far off right, because it's just I mean, the thing that this movie won't do that we'll talk about is like acknowledge like it. I feel like multiple times they walk right up to the line of acknowledging colonialism, but and then not quite then back off and say Americans believe in baseball, and they're like, well, what the hell like you like, it's so close, and multiple instances of genocidal colonialism as well. It's like American colonialism, English colonialism of Ireland like, but instead it's just kind of vaguefied and to like, we had some difficult times, but we were resilient and now you're fine, and you're like, Okay, what was the what happened? What happened? And that's you know where Disney draws the line. They're not about to talk about what.

00:26:16
Speaker 2: Happened, certainly not and certainly not in two thousand and one. Okay, So Kyle is curious. His parents keep being like, no, that's we're American, so shut the hell off.

00:26:29
Speaker 3: We're from Cleveland again, and a very funny joke.

00:26:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, that maybe goes on for too long, but they talk about it all the time.

00:26:36
Speaker 3: Until the very end of the movie they're still I'm like, okay, okay, yeah, But anyways.

00:26:41
Speaker 2: Either way, Kyle can't help but feel like there's something his parents are not telling him. Also, Kyle has a Chekhov's Lucky Coin necklace thing which he takes to his basketball game where he made makes a lucky shot. It wins his team the big game and they're gonna go to the championships. And then the next day he takes a test at school and he guesses all the correct answers by pure luck. So he's a lucky guy.

00:27:15
Speaker 3: Although at some point I felt like it got confusing where it's like the it stands for the luck of the Irish, which again is like pretty laden in tropes around Irish people, but also at some points it seems to in conversations with Bonnie, it seems to sort of be the lucky coin stands in for like white.

00:27:35
Speaker 2: Privilege, white privilege.

00:27:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, but kind of only in that one scene where she's like, oh, well, you never have to try, like you know, some of us actually have to try, and it feels like she's talking about white privilege. But then that kind of just goes away and you're like well, that was like many things in this movie, We're like, that was an interesting idea, we will not be saying it again.

00:27:54
Speaker 2: Yeah. That immediately tapers off and goes nowhere. Yes, yeah, okay. So that night he asks his parents again where their ancestors are from, and this is where we get the scene with the disgusting bowls.

00:28:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:28:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again his parents dodge the question. So at school the next day he goes on www dot Internet search website dot com, slash two thousand and one, every movie.

00:28:25
Speaker 3: Every Yeah, He's like, what is what? Who is my dad? Like that's sort of yes.

00:28:35
Speaker 2: And then the girl at school who keeps hounding him about Bonnie the Heritage Day assembly, This is Bonnie Lopez. She sees him struggling, so she tries to help. But Kyle's last name is Johnson, which of course is one of the most common names in the US, So he cannot find anything. There's like four million hits on his search, and he does not know his mother's maide a name. He says something like, yeah, I've never really thought about my mom's side of the family, and it's like, oh, do you not consider women at all?

00:29:12
Speaker 3: People? And also like seeing his dad I'm like, this is the interesting person in your family. Oh my gosh, it is like the most like stereotypical, like Dufus Disney dad. Oh my god, ever, I'm from Cleveland whatever. And of course this will come up with Bonnie multiple times. But like Bonnie good potential for a character, right, But like, the thing with Bonnie is that her whole you know, she is in charge of heritage day all this stuff, and we never find out what herriage, anything about her heritage. We find out at the end that her and Kyle's other friend, Russell, who is black, they both have fathers. That's the reveal at the end of the movie. They both have fathers, and you're it's just like, okay, but you never learned anything about their heritage except for a very weird line of dialogue that we'll get to oh later, trust me.

00:30:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So Kyle is like, why don't I know anything about my family's heritage. So he keeps digging around. He looks through his dad's yearbook and newspaper clippings and like his birth certificate or something. I don't know, but he discovers that his dad's last name wasn't originally Johnson, but Smith.

00:30:29
Speaker 3: And You're like, is he a spy? Is he cool?

00:30:32
Speaker 2: The answer is no, no, And I don't even does this even come back? Why did he change his name?

00:30:39
Speaker 3: It's they changed They changed it so that they wouldn't Okay, this is confusing, Like they they said later that there is and this is like again based in something real, but the way they're describing it is so incoherent, where they're like, oh, like leprechauns don't accept leprechaun's marry non leprechaun like you can't have marriages with non leprechauns, which does come off a bit anti irish, but that they like, Okay. This is where I get confused, because I think that they changed their names so that they would they could like live in cognito mode. But they also moved to the town where her father owns a very successful potato chip factory. So I'm like, why did they not move somewhere else?

00:31:31
Speaker 2: Well, I think they moved their first to Utah, and then the father follows them but doesn't try to interact with them.

00:31:39
Speaker 3: At all, and so I'm like, well, then why the hell did he do that? And why I mean the potato chip of it all is so funny. And also Bonnie is so like smartgirl dot jpeg that she knows things that you're like, what the hell who told you that? Where she when they get to the potato chip factory because listeners, there is a climactic scene at the potato chip factory where she's like, actually, potato chips were invented over one hundred years ago. I'm like, why do you know when potato chips were invented? You can't just be like anyways, and it's not even Irish, it's just whatever, It's fine.

00:32:21
Speaker 2: It's so confusing, Okay. So Kyle learns that there's some mystery with his family name, and so he and his friend Russell speculate why his dad might have changed his last name. And this is all happening while they're shooting hoops because they wedge basketball in every chance they.

00:32:39
Speaker 3: Get anywhere, anywhere possible.

00:32:42
Speaker 2: And then Kyle sees a sign advertising this like Irish fair thing yeah that this guy named Seamus McTiernan runs.

00:32:56
Speaker 3: Who randomly ends up being the villain, although it takes a really long time.

00:33:00
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, and so on this sign is a symbol that matches the symbol that's on Kyle's lucky coin. So Kyle is like, what am I Irish? And so they go to this Irish fair.

00:33:16
Speaker 3: It also is so funny to be that, Like, I don't know, maybe it's because I grew up in a very like high concentrated Irish Italian area, but the fact that he's like shocked that he could be Irish, I'm like, it's it can't be that shocking. That's so it's I'm like trying to think of an equally ludicrous thing for him to be shocked by. But he's like, I'm Irish. You're like, I mean, yeah, you're Ryan Merriman. He also looks Irish. Yeah, his mom has red hair, Like he's like, I'm Irish. Anyways, well, he never noticed his mom's hair because he never noticed his mom before because he does not consider women to be people. Yeah he said he he said, women actually aren't people to me, And you're like, oh, got it got him?

00:34:11
Speaker 2: Oh I see Okay. So at the fair, they meet an old irishman who keeps carrying on about Kyle's shoes, and he mentions Kyle's mom there's this weird thing with cgi quarters, and then the old irishman mysteriously disappears, and so we're like, okay, we're getting kind of like plot Wich vibes, except it's a plot man man, which yes, okay. So then some step dancers start performing, led by the man who runs this fair, shamous McTiernan played by Timothy Omendsen, who is like in things like he was in psych and he's in some other stones.

00:34:59
Speaker 3: Yeah. G was like, I love this guy.

00:35:02
Speaker 2: I don't know, You're like, oh yeah, sure. And so Kyle starts like doing the dance along with all these dancers, like he somehow instinctively knows all the steps, which.

00:35:14
Speaker 3: I again, it's presenting like I'm displaying symptoms of irishness, like.

00:35:22
Speaker 2: He's having an Irish outbreak.

00:35:24
Speaker 3: Uncontrollable step dancing, It's like it's iconic. It's iconic, the uncontrollable step dancing. It's like, I'm you know, Irish SLISters is very possible. I don't know, You're like, am I offended by it? It's hard, it's hard. It's just so silly.

00:35:43
Speaker 2: It's so so silly.

00:35:44
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:35:45
Speaker 2: So he's dancing, but then someone bumps into him and knocks him on the ground, and then they help him up and they're kind of like man handling him a bit, and we're like, hmmm, what was that all about. Don't worry, we'll find out soon. But before then, his mother, Kate, seemingly apropos of nothing, suddenly has an Irish accent. She's cooking traditional Irish food for breakfast. She has unleashed her curly red hair, and she's like, by the way, Kyle, I've decided to tell you that me family came from Ireland. And he's like, oh, okay, what what?

00:36:28
Speaker 3: He cannot believe it. I cannot believe his white Irish family with red hair is from Ireland.

00:36:36
Speaker 2: I also don't understand why she changed her mind all of a sudden. Is it because of the coin thing?

00:36:43
Speaker 3: I think it's again, it's like, the rules are so unclear. I thought I thought that the rules of being Irish, but like, also it fully conflates being Irish with being a straight up leprechaun. Like I couldn't I couldn't tell if this movie in the world this movie takes place in regular Irish people exist.

00:37:02
Speaker 2: Or right or all Irish people. Leprechauns is a leprechaun movie.

00:37:07
Speaker 3: There's also confusing rules around, like when you can see a Leprechun versus when you can't. At the at the climax of this movie, the grandfather Leprechaun is just sitting on top of a basketball hoop, and so I I was like trying to get there, and I'm like, oh, probably only other leprechauns can see him. Question work. But then Russell just walks up to him and is like hey, and I was like, okay, so everyone can see him and no one cares. Yeah, the rules are I mean, it's you'll, You're just there's there's no point in trying to understand the rules because there's no rules. But I I thought that the mom was becoming uncontrollably irish as a symptom of being irish. I thought it was like she she's like, you know, she can't control it. It couldn't. I didn't interpret it as a decision she was making well because which is not great for agency of women, which is what the show is about.

00:38:04
Speaker 2: This is true. I okay, here's my best guess. Okay, her suddenly displaying her irishness.

00:38:12
Speaker 3: But also not irishness.

00:38:14
Speaker 2: It's she's leprechaunness.

00:38:16
Speaker 3: Yes, it's like being Irish is a symptom that could lead to becoming a leprechaun. That's sort of the because she, I guess she did first embrace like very broad iris, like Irish food, and uh, her hair is out and she has an accent, but then it's presented as like and the symptoms continued to worsen, and then she became a leprechaun. So here's what it is. Maybe okay, try yeah anything.

00:38:47
Speaker 2: Her displaying these quote unquote Irish slash leprechaun because the movie does not know the distinction between the two traits. Coincides with Kyle losing his coin, which he doesn't know that he has lost it yet, but it happens at the fair because it gets stolen. We'll find that out. And then that seems to be the moment that his mom and the whole thing is that the coin allows this family to hide their leprechaun features, such as their very short stature and their Irish accents. That's why the coin is so important. And then when he loses it, that's when his mom is no longer able to like, quote unquote pass as a human right.

00:39:33
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like that's fine. I mean, this movie there's so many reads of this movie, and the movie just never really decides on what.

00:39:41
Speaker 2: Well, no, the movie like the grandpa does say that he's like, the coin is what we use.

00:39:47
Speaker 3: Well, yes, he literally.

00:39:48
Speaker 2: Says, like that's how we pass as human, I know, the lucky coin.

00:39:52
Speaker 3: But it's like, but that also kind of but that read which they state, also for me kind of chafed with the Body Horror read, which they also state, and like it just feels like there's a little bit of mixed messaging of like should we be proud to be irish or not? Like it's, oh, we're so confusing because yeah, I wrote, like you know, there's a read of this movie that's like a coming of age body horror. And then there's the one that like, being a leprechaun is a metaphor for being a descendant of an immigrant culture that's been forced to assimilate, but it's still an unavoidable part of who you are, and that's nothing to be ashamed of. And you can't at some point, you can't tide where you come from, even if you don't fully understand why you are the way you are, and that there is this you know, inherent disconnect if you are isolated from your native culture. And then there's the one where it's like I'm so short now and I'm scared, Like it's so confusing. I love this movie.

00:40:49
Speaker 2: I think wait right, it's like and maybe this is us getting ahead of ourselves, but the movie is trying to be like, America is a culturally diverse melt pot, and that's part of what makes it great.

00:41:03
Speaker 3: But then it's also like, also, being American is a distinct identity and it's important that you adhere to it. It's very confusing, and.

00:41:13
Speaker 2: Our cultural differences should be celebrated. But also if you are culturally different from quote unquote American culture, such as being a leprechaun question mark, you should hide it.

00:41:28
Speaker 3: And well that's the thing. It's like, yeah, but the like when Kyle embraces his and again like we have to for the sake of the way the movie works conflate Irish people and leprechauns, which is but like, once he embraces the fact that he is Irish, all his leprechaun like qualities disappear and he is himself again. So you're like, well, it's not it's not very Shrekian, is what I'll say, because part of why Shrek is so effective genuinely is because he continues to embody the other form and like embraces the beauty of it. And that's what Fiona does, right, But Kyle kind of goes back to looking like a white kid in Utah, so like it's just whatever, whatever, this movie doesn't make any sense again.

00:42:25
Speaker 2: No, okay, where were we? Kyle's mom is displaying irish qualities.

00:42:34
Speaker 3: But also like he's yeah, sort of quote unquote quote exactly quote unquote.

00:42:39
Speaker 2: And then the other unusual thing about this day is that Kyle's luck seems to have run out. He gets splashed by a puddle, he keeps dropping things and spilling food all over himself. He drinks from a drinking fountain that makes him look like he pissed his pants, he can't make any foul shots at basketball practice. And then also after this practice, they also have another the big basketball game that same night. Like normally you don't have a practice and then a game on the same day, but sure, yeah, this.

00:43:16
Speaker 3: Is like we've got bigger fish to fry. I don't even know. Honestly, that did not even scan for me. I was like, yeah, of course, of course. Of course we've been at the school for forty hours at this point.

00:43:25
Speaker 2: The other sports thing that doesn't scan is that toward the end of the movie, Kyle is wrestling and then Russell says like, oh, yeah, Kyle's on the wrestling team.

00:43:34
Speaker 3: Oh. I loved that. I loved that. They just throw that in there so that the scene makes sense so exactly. But here's the thing.

00:43:41
Speaker 2: The wrestling season, oh h happens at the same time as basketball season, so you probably can't do both.

00:43:47
Speaker 3: I think that that that to me screamed studio note where they're like, why can you do that? Oh, just have Russell say he's on the wrestling team. That'll make sense. Meanwhile, it's like one of the most incoherency in the entire movie where they're doing ancient Gaelic games while repeating incorrect Irish history, like it's so bizarre. It's so bizarre. Yep.

00:44:11
Speaker 2: Okay. Anyway, so before we get there, there is this basketball game and Kyle, because his luck has run out, biffs the game and everyone is mad at him, although they still win. So they have another the big game the following night.

00:44:28
Speaker 3: The next day.

00:44:29
Speaker 2: Okay, so then the next day his mom is now in like, I don't know, nineteenth century Irish garb. Her irishness quote unquote keeps heightening, and Kyle is still having really bad luck, and he finally realizes it's because his lucky coin necklace is gone, because his is made from gold, but the one he has is iron, which he finds out in science class because they're experimenting with magnet.

00:45:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Russell knows how magnets work, which is how we randomly when we're later told I want to be a scientist, I was like, oh, because he knew one thing about magnets.

00:45:09
Speaker 2: Well, he knows about magnets, and he knows about rainbows and like it's refracting of lights.

00:45:13
Speaker 3: So he knows stuff. He's a science kid.

00:45:16
Speaker 2: He's a kid in stem.

00:45:17
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:45:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is how Kyle finds out about his necklace. So he realizes someone must have stolen the coin and swapped it out for a different one. Kyle goes home and discovers then that his mom is a leprechaun and comes from a long line of the leprechauns of the like clan O'Reilly. So his mom's maiden name is O'Reilly. His mom is now six inches tall, and this all explains why Kyle his hair is turning red, his ears are kind of pointy, he's shrinking, he's like shorter than he used to be because he's half Leprechaun.

00:46:02
Speaker 3: It's it's pretty cool. It's pretty he is. Again, this is like a horrific sequence. But they're like, I also like that they stop short of They're like, well, he's only half leprecan so he's only going to get like a little smaller, right, He's gonna be just like a short kid. And his and he has like kind of like a box dye job for sure, which is awesome. The ears, it it's you know, it's a lot, but I'm into it.

00:46:30
Speaker 2: The makeup department was really they were cooking, Yeah, with all twelve dollars they were given precisely. Okay, So we learn that as long as the O'Reilly clan has their luck aka the Lucky Coin, they can pass as human. But because Kyle no longer has the coin, that's why they're all shrinking and becoming more leprechaun like. And Kyle is like, okay, I think I know who stole the coin. This old Irish man at the fair and his mom is like, oh, yeah, that's your grandfather. We were bound to run into him ever since he opened up that potato chip factory down the road.

00:47:16
Speaker 3: And You're just like, I cannot, I cannot take in another piece of information right now? What do you mean ever since he opened that potato chip factory around the corner from where we live in Utah? Like sure, if any why the hell not?

00:47:34
Speaker 2: Wouldn't it make more sense if the if the movie was set in Idaho, which is famous for potatoes.

00:47:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, and also not for nothing. Like again, just the randomization of this movie, like potato chips are not from Ireland, they were invented in England. Oh again, just like a lot of weird English history is being attributed to and that's like very obscure. It was invented in England in like the eighteen hundreds. So I'm like what, so why? So just like why why?

00:48:10
Speaker 2: Why? Is the question you can ask every thirty seconds I would say in this movie. Okay, so we learned this about Kyle's grandfather, who he had never met because the grandfather disowned his daughter aka Kyle's mom when she married a human. Because as you alluded to earlier Leprechauns don't believe in mixed marriages.

00:48:36
Speaker 3: And he's never thought about his family before.

00:48:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't, although he does like it seems like he approached Kyle at that fair knowing that that was his grandson. And he's like, wow, shoes, leather, potato chips, and it's just like, is this how you talk to your grandson?

00:49:00
Speaker 3: Yeah? I also loved the cgi quarters he throws into the sky.

00:49:04
Speaker 2: Oh it's icon hideous. Okay. So Kyle and his family go to the potato chip factory called Emerald Isle to confront Kyle's granddad, whose name is Riley, Oh Riley, And let that sink in for a minute.

00:49:25
Speaker 3: And that's on Ireland, right.

00:49:31
Speaker 2: Right, And he's played by Henry Gibson, who I recognize from a few different things. He's also like, you know, he's in stuff, not you.

00:49:43
Speaker 3: Know, he's American for what it's worth, he's American. If you couldn't tell, that's not a real Irish accent. He does look very weight. I'm looking at his Oh oh grant, Okay, I'm out in my fiance as a dork. He's he's in magnet. Oh yeah, that's what Grant knew him from.

00:50:01
Speaker 2: I think that's what I most recognize him from as well.

00:50:03
Speaker 3: In Magnolia, he's in wedding crashers and he's in Boston Legal. Maybe that's what I know him from. Oh wow, anyways, he's I think he makes a meal of whatever the hell he's supposed to be doing, and oh, absolutely, I enjoyed. I enjoyed it.

00:50:20
Speaker 2: Okay, So they go to try to confront Grandpa Riley O'Reilly, but they can't get in to see him. Meanwhile, Bonnie is at the factory for a tour with the Young Achievers Club, so Kyle links up with her. The security guards start chasing them because Kyle isn't supposed to be there, and then they end up bumping into Grandpa Riley O'Reilly, who tells them about the luck of the Clan O'Reilly and he's like, well, I didn't steal your coin, but I think I know who did. Seamus McTiernan, the guy who puts on the Irish step dancing.

00:51:02
Speaker 3: Fair And you're like, right, the perfect crime there.

00:51:08
Speaker 2: And we learn that Seamus is a fair dereg which I had to look this up. It's a type of fairy found in Irish folklore, one who loves playing pranks, especially like kind of gruesome pranks.

00:51:24
Speaker 3: Yes, there are random real things that are referenced here, but there's so few and far between that I have to attribute it to rewrites. Oh yeah, they're like, we should put a fact in here, right, So.

00:51:39
Speaker 2: They go after Seamus in Riley's lime green convertible. So awesome, So it is pretty cool. Also, Riley O'Reilly has a long white beard now because I guess this is him turning more and more into a leprocase.

00:51:58
Speaker 3: Again, it's like Irish as Irish is a disease and you're catching it. Yeah.

00:52:04
Speaker 2: Russell also randomly joins them because he's just sort of out wandering the streets.

00:52:11
Speaker 3: As many characters as most of the supporting characters in this movie seem to be doing. They're just loose.

00:52:17
Speaker 2: They're just kind of waiting around for Kyle.

00:52:19
Speaker 3: It's kind of Truman show ish. They're just like, where's Kyle at?

00:52:24
Speaker 2: Is exactly like that?

00:52:25
Speaker 3: Yes?

00:52:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, So together they start chasing Seamus's mobile home camper van thing that has a pot of gold inside. But because the Clan O'Reilly don't have luck anymore, they crash the car because Seamus throws corned beef and cabbage on the windshield.

00:52:47
Speaker 3: So some really interesting, intense, like intense shots of corn beef and cabbage really beautiful, Like, yeah, I and I love my Irish brethren, but the food is just not for me. It's just not for me. And I don't think this movie does it any favors in making it. Oh my god, well, because the breakfast looks good. The breakfast looks good.

00:53:09
Speaker 2: Sure, but then also his mom is like, here, take this to school. It is a rusty bucket full of what appears to be mostly slopped.

00:53:18
Speaker 3: Why does she give him lunch in a bucket? Is a question.

00:53:21
Speaker 2: I had no lid.

00:53:22
Speaker 3: This is taking this is taking it back a little bit. But I did think it was very funny and very like Disney coated that on like Kyle's least Lucky day. Ninety percent of what happens to him is he's just like spilling things on himself. He's just like every he's like, this is the worst day ever. And then he'll like slip on a banana peel and fall into like a bowl of soup, and like it's just him getting stuff on his clothes.

00:53:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, all day long, all day long, worse day ever, which okay, you know we've talked so much about like Hillary duff pratfalls. Yeah, it's nice to see a boy character do he gets something similar for one.

00:54:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's like not even I guess he does fall. He does fall, he does fall.

00:54:06
Speaker 2: But you're right, it is mostly it's like whatever, it's it's general clumsiness.

00:54:11
Speaker 3: It's just like a scene after scene, we cut a cut a few because he gets he gets spilled on at the locker, he gets spilled on at lunch, he gets spilled on out, he gets he spills the bucket on himself.

00:54:20
Speaker 2: The water fountain sprays his crotch, and then it looks like he pete himself. He gets splashed by a puddle with a car driving by. It's truly like eight different things.

00:54:29
Speaker 3: It's just so. And meanwhile he's like doing this weird teenage like hitting on a girl where he's like, looky looking good ladies.

00:54:40
Speaker 5: It's like, ah, Ryan Merryman, looking good ladies. I'm like, yeah, definitely what fifteen year old boys were doing. It's so like my dad wrote a script.

00:54:52
Speaker 3: Oh looking good the ladies.

00:54:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so the car has a flat tire. Their chase, their pursuit of Seamus McTiernan has come to a screeching cult. All hope is lost. Kyle is like, I'm not even good at basketball, am I it was just my luck that made me good at it. And then his dad is like, oh, I'm so sorry, Kyle. We should have told you about your leprechaun heritage a long time ago.

00:55:24
Speaker 3: I do appreciate that the dad apologizes to him. I sure am confused about the implications of his whole life being attributed to a coin. Like again, this is where the white privilege thing becomes introduced and unintroduced. There's a great scene with Bonnie and Kyle where she says like, you're a nice guy, but you'd be a better person if everything hadn't always been so easy for you, and then she like basically dunks a basketball that wasn't luck, it was practice, you know, hard work. And you're like, oh, that's interesting, but it's also kind of I feel like it's it's sad for Kyle's entire like his passion is playing basketball, and they're like, well, that had nothing to do with you, and you're like, that's really that's really dark. That's a really dark thing to introduce. Like without this, I don't know, I like it doesn't even really scan for me. Like, without without a connection to your culture, you have no function, You're useless, Like it's just a Again, the messaging is a little bit like muddled. I don't quite a muddled Dan. Yeah, Like I don't think that there's a way to be like, oh, this is what they were trying to say. They were just like, we got to fill eighty minutes on TV. Yes, exactly by any means necessary. Yeah, including what is about to happen, which I definitely didn't remember and could not have anticipated. The ancient games.

00:56:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's coming up very shortly. First in this like you know, end of act to low point moment, it starts pouring rain and so they're stuck.

00:56:58
Speaker 3: In the rain.

00:56:58
Speaker 2: But Bonnie an uplifting speech.

00:57:02
Speaker 3: About how Irish people lifted themselves by their bootstraps and America is slay. Wait when the Irish also, she knows so much about Irish history, and we get no insight into her heritage this scene. We have to just go through it. Yeah, Bonnie says, when the Irish came to America. Things were tough, and they had to work at jobs that other people wouldn't take, and they didn't get paid what they deserve. Russell interjects, at least they got paid, which I think is supposed to reference that he is possibly descended from enslaved people.

00:57:36
Speaker 2: That's what I thought as well.

00:57:37
Speaker 3: Yes, which is an unhinged way to acknowledge acknowledge slave slavery. And yes, also that is the only insight we get into any non Irish character's heritage. It's upsetting. Bonnie ignores the thing Russell has said, correct and continues, but they didn't give up, and they kept trying until things got better. That's what makes them special, not where they are now, but the spirit that keeps them going on the way there. Kyle says she's a young achiever to nag her, and then Bonnie is, you know, whips are fucking flat, and she doesn't, but she says, I'm an American, That's what we all are, and Americans don't give up. And everyone's like clapping check yeah, Like it's one of the weirdest jingoistic Like I mean, it does sort of. I still think it's weird even for its time, But like, it definitely lines up with a lot of the messaging that you received or you received. It's certainly not messaging that children are getting now from the oppressive power structure they live inside of, because we now live in an openly anti immigrant country. But for a long time, the way that Americans would and particularly white Americans would obvious gate the internalized racism and anti immigrant tendencies was to tell kids, we're a nation of immigrants, we're a melting but all together, we're a melting pot, and we're all Americans, and the identity of Americans is one of tolerance. And and then like capitalism, basically it's like working hard. There's a there's a scene that happens later with Kyle and his grandfather where Kyle's grandfather, Riley O'Reilly, is like, I'm gonna take the gold. Then Kyle's like, no, don't take the gold. We work hard to do to earn, like to or we came to America to work hard. And so it's like preaching the melting pot myth that America was founded on. And also capitalism is is how immigrant communities are able to lift themselves up. And you're just like, this is a mess and it ends on this land is your land?

01:00:03
Speaker 2: Or like yeah, yeah, no, there's so many either like monologues or bits of voiceover or just imagery that is basically like you will say, you would say, like it is.

01:00:16
Speaker 3: So jinguistic, right, which feels very of its time, Like it feels like it reminds me again of a very weird and coherent version of like stuff you would experience at school as a kid, of like assemblies and like we're so proud to be Americans. And I don't know if you were at if you were in a public school, anytime I ran around nine to eleven, like it was relentless m hm.

01:00:39
Speaker 2: So Bonnie gives this speech about how awesome America is, which causes the rain to instantly stop and a rainbow appears. Oh you didn't think the rain was plot relevant, Well it is because now there's a rainbow.

01:00:56
Speaker 3: They have to go fight in the ancient games and.

01:00:59
Speaker 2: They have to chase the under the rainbow. So they do, and they're running and running, and then they eventually find Seamus's camper van and Kyle and his grandfather sneak inside and take back Kyle's lucky coin, but not.

01:01:16
Speaker 3: All of the gold, because that would be you have they have to earn the gold. I was like, I don't think Seamus earned the gold. No, and that's well whatever, whatever. No, for some reason, Kyle is right in this situation.

01:01:32
Speaker 2: Kyle is right. Well, yeah, we learned that Seamus the whole reason that he stole Kyle's coin was that he's collecting all the lucky coins from all the leprechauns across America so that he can become the king of the Leprechauns.

01:01:46
Speaker 3: And based on what we've seen, because we are conflating Leprechauns and Ireland, I'm like, so he's sort of like, I'm going to be the k King of Ireland Ireland, which to my understanding, and again I'm not super tapped into Irish history. I think that the reason they're going into ancient history and the Teltan Games is because he's trying to recapture an ancient version of Ireland question mark. But again, it is confusing that they do that. It feels like kind of obvious gating that they're doing that because the relevant parts of Irish culture that we're talking about to the plot, it seems like Kyle's grandfather immigrated from Ireland, possibly around the time that Ireland gained independence, possibly during the time of the potato fan man. That history isn't interfaced with because that is too challenging to colonialism. I think. I think that's why they go into ancient history, because they don't want to talk about English colonization anymore than they want to talk about American colonization. That's my guess.

01:02:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I I can see it. Yeah, I'm also guessing that that's why they're like, yeah, Riley O'Reilly invented the potato chip because Ireland equals potatoes. Yeah.

01:03:12
Speaker 3: I do think that that is as far as they're thinking about it, honestly for sure.

01:03:16
Speaker 2: Okay, so they find Kyle's lucky coin again, but Seamus McTiernan uses his fair Darrig magic to sense that something is wrong, and he appears and kidnaps Riley O'Reilly, and then Kyle remembers that Seamus can't say no to a bet, something that was planted earlier in the movie. So Kyle challenges Seamus, saying, if I beat you at sports, you have to let my grandfather and I go, and I get to keep my lucky coin.

01:03:53
Speaker 3: And then he really raises the steaks for seemingly no reason at all and says, yeah, go ahead.

01:04:01
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so they play sports, but oh no, it's not you know, basketball and baseball and football like Kyle was expecting. Seamus transports Kyle and Russell maybe to Ireland. I'm not sure where they are, but they're on a field where they play the Charlton Games, which again had to look up, but it's a series of games and sporting events similar to but pre dates the Greek Olympics by over a thousand years. And then I started to do a deep dive on these games and I was like, focus, Caitlin, it's really interesting.

01:04:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is is. I'd never heard of these before, nor I.

01:04:44
Speaker 2: So they start doing the various kind of sporting events such as the sport of hurling. They're also heaving around boulders and chariot wheels, and they're wrestling and Kyle's team and Seamus's teams and up tying, and Seamus was like, well, the bet was that you would beat me, and you didn't beat me because we tied. So Kyle has to hand over his lucky coin. But then he's like, well wait a minute. What if if I beat you at basketball without my luck and my lucky coin, I get to get my luck back, and you have to go to the land of my forefathers, the shores of Eerie for all of eternity. And if I lose. I think these are the stakes you were talking about, I will be your slave, he says.

01:05:37
Speaker 3: And why the hell does he raise the stakes in that way that is not asked of him? He just says, here are the stakes. I'm willing to Like, it's so weird. I know that, like I would say the stakes are appropriately high before he says that, it's just I don't have an xation for it. I just thought it was very weird that the stakes were raised so severely.

01:06:05
Speaker 2: I guess he's trying to save his grandpa, because yeah, But also it's just like, why did he suggest that? I don't know, I don't know.

01:06:15
Speaker 3: I would have suggested something far less consequential, right, But Kyle is so confident in his basketball skills that he has been told he doesn't have that he would be willing to raise the stakes in that way.

01:06:27
Speaker 2: He's risking it all.

01:06:29
Speaker 3: I was confused. I was confused, But the stakes were raised regardless of how I feel.

01:06:35
Speaker 2: This is true and actually that's really good storytelling. So yeah, there you go, there you go. Okay, so Seamus transports them to the middle of Kyle and Russell's the biggest game yet it.

01:06:48
Speaker 3: Is so well because the Telton games I thought was the big game, but there was bigger games to be had. There's a still somehow another game, and now Riley O'Reilly is chained a basketball.

01:07:00
Speaker 2: Who yes, yeah, and theoretically everyone everyone can see him to everyone can see him, no one reacts, and when they're playing against Shamus, the referee.

01:07:12
Speaker 3: Like again, it feels like a studio note of like, well they wouldn't just let Ryan Merriman play basketball, I guess a forty year old, and so they call it out for some reason where I think again, it's like Russell is tasked with having to like spackle the plot where he's like, wait, you're not just gonna let us play against a forty year old and the referee is like trunk whatever, then lets him play against an angry.

01:07:40
Speaker 2: Forty year old who becomes at one point really like ghoulish looking. He becomes this like Leprechaun monster. But don't worry it has absolutely no consequences or effect on the plot. No, and it happens right before Russell scores the winning basket, although before that they're playing in their Kyle's team is losing, and then he has to realize that actually, luck doesn't come from a lucky coin, it comes from your heart. Or maybe luck is confidence and confidence comes from your heart.

01:08:15
Speaker 3: Or there's a number of possible answers. There's an you can really kind of choose your own adventure as to what the ending means. Also, we randomly see Russell's dad. Russell's dad is presented as like this big I feel like he's presented as a reveal, even though we've been told he exists many times. No, we see him.

01:08:34
Speaker 2: Earlier in the like we see him pretty early on in the movie.

01:08:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, we do see it because he's talked about a lot, because Russell's always like my dad, my dad, my dad, And you're like, okay, this is going to be another person of call our best friend whose family we never meet. I guess we technically meet his family. But also it's just weird that Bonnie and Russell. You know this happens, but I just thought it was weird that they were both like, here's their dad, and because this story is like pretty aggressively disinterested in women and specifically mothers, because it's like, to me, Kyle's mother is very important until the grandfather's introduced, and then she all but disappears from the movie for sure. It was like they just were waiting for it to get to a point where it could be about fathers and sons, and then they kind of do away with her, like.

01:09:23
Speaker 2: This movie could easily write out the grandpa character and just just have Kyle's mom take on that role.

01:09:30
Speaker 3: Well, but then how are there be a potato chip factory.

01:09:33
Speaker 2: Caitlin, Well, yeah, and that's a hugely important part of the stories.

01:09:38
Speaker 3: I'm guessing that that's a big reason stand that's corrected. Yeah.

01:09:43
Speaker 2: Also, I was wondering, like, so my best guess about like, Okay, we only meet Russell and Bonnie's dads, but not their mom's because both of those characters, Bonnie and Russell have tiny little arcs, but they're both about basketball, and I think the movie was just like, well, okay, they both like basketball, and so their dad has to be involved because sports and basketball are boy things. Even though Bonnie wants to play bad. So like, I don't know, I don't know the logic behind any of this, but it is messy and ridiculous. Yeah, Okay, The point is Kyle's team at the last minute wins the big game to end all big games, which means that Kyle takes back his lucky coin and Seamus is cast away not to era like Seamus Things, which of course is the name of Ireland in the Irish language.

01:10:46
Speaker 3: Yes, which is I didn't think was clearly explained. No, I had to look it up, not that it's And again it's like it's interesting because there are certain movies we just talked about Daughters of the Dust recently that is like it is a directorial choice and intention to not explain a culture because it is not someone's job to explain their culture to you. But I don't think that really plays here, because no, this whole movie has been presenting very broad Irish stereotypes and also still explaining them. So then to present an actual fact and not tell us what it means is weird.

01:11:25
Speaker 2: Weird And also you like, consider the audience, this is young people watching it. Yeah, it's like clearly like sort of an educational intention with this movie, but they're not correctly educating the audience. No, Okay, so a little trick because Kyle is a leprechaun and leprecauns love little tricks. He says, I didn't mean Era, I meant Eerie aka the shores of Lake Erie aka Cleveland, Ohio. Oh my god, because Dad, because Kyle's dad is famously from Cleveland. Yeah, there's the small beat with Bonnie and her dad, who is always pressuring her to overachieve. But Bonnie's whole thing is she actually wants to play basketball. And because a white man told Bonnie's dad that he should let her play basketball, He's like, Okay.

01:12:16
Speaker 3: Sounds great because it turns out this is what she's Yeah, fixed it there. And then Riley r Is like and that's kind of the magic of America, isn't it?

01:12:24
Speaker 2: And You're like, right, right, right, And then the movie ends with the Heritage Day assembly where Kyle does Irish step dancing because he's fully embracing his Irish heritage.

01:12:38
Speaker 3: Now, poor Ryan Merriman, I'm like, did they give him even one minute of training? He looks awful, he looks terrible.

01:12:46
Speaker 2: Doesn't appear to be doing it. Well, and then he leads the crowd in song. Like you said, Jamie, They're singing this land is your island, this line is Mineland, and it's all very yay America.

01:13:02
Speaker 3: The end, Yeah, it's it's and again like we could get into and there's I believe a lot of good episodes of cool people who did cool stuff about this, like the history of the song this land is Your Land and Woody Guthrie is far more nuanced than the very jingoistic way it's presented here. But I don't think it's intended to I don't think it's put here for the sake of nuance. I think it's just like America is all about, uh, whatever this movie was. And you're like, right, yeah, totally.

01:13:37
Speaker 2: Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for more.

01:13:51
Speaker 3: And we're back and we're back.

01:13:53
Speaker 2: Okay, we've already talked about a lot of the things. Yeah, yeah, I mean, And the big thing with this movie is that it clearly wants to present this idea of like, Wow, America is great because it's so culturally diverse and it's a melting pot and all of our cultural differences from all of our heritages make it awesome.

01:14:21
Speaker 3: But while avoiding all of the parts of American history that did not support that. It's so it's like, obviously it's like bad for kids to be receiving this messaging in the way that it's bad when kids receive that messaging at school, which the message itself the message of tolerance and the message of like it is a positive thing to be connected with your heritage and to know and understand it and to feel comfortable sharing it with other people. That is true? Is it true that you know, at different points in history there have been opportunities for immigrant communities that were not possible elsewhere. Sure, but it's just so clearly American propaganda that like there's no nuance to what is being said. So it's frustrating. It undercuts what I think is like kind of a nice message, which is like a connection to your native heritage is a positive thing, right, which is like yeah, but it's also tying that in with I mean, like we've talked about on the show a lot, and what is like very clear here is just like, but on top of your native heritage, you're also an American capitalist and you love America, don't you. And there's nothing wrong with America. All we do is play baseball and work really hard and there's no I mean, there's a moment with Kyle and his parents at the beginning where it's like almost presented as a joke where he asks if he's if they're indigenous. He's just throwing out random cultures of like are we this?

01:16:02
Speaker 5: Are we this?

01:16:02
Speaker 3: Are we this? And they're like, no, I don't, of course we're not indigenous. You know, Like there are moments where colonialism is acknowledged, right referenced, but I guess referenced is the word, but not acknowledged.

01:16:18
Speaker 2: The way indigenouity in this movie is handled is very bizarre. I have a whole spill about this. It f you'll indulge me, please. So opening scene of the movie is Kyle's dream. We're in the auditorium. We see like different people from different cultural backgrounds who are never characters that we meet never never. The stage features flags from around the world, including the flag of Israel, the genocidal fake country of Israel. There's the voice over talking about, oh, celebrating our cultural differences. We see a native person dancing on stage. They're in regalia. They're doing what appears to be a traditional Native dance. I am unable to say how authentic any of this is, right, I don't know for sure either way. Again, another character, well, I wouldn't even call him a character, Like, we don't meet this, but they're not a character, you know, we know nothing about them. Yeah, And then again the way indigenouity in this movie is either largely ignored or referenced in very bizarro interactions. The next one is, like you were just talking about Kyle asking his parents where they immigrated from. He says, everyone's family comes from somewhere else if you go far back enough, unless we're Indians meaning native people, right.

01:17:44
Speaker 3: Which is referencing that, like native people were on this land before. But there's no effort to be like I mean, it's just that like obfuscation of like and then what happened because this is a movie or more importantly, a media company that is ever going to acknowledge colonialism or colonial genocide exactly. And then the dad is like, no, I don't, We're from Cleveland.

01:18:14
Speaker 2: We're from Cleveland, right. A little bit before that, one of the many times Bonnie goes up to Kyle to ask him about his heritage. And what he's gonna do for the Heritage Day Assembly, and she says America is a nation of immigrants. Everyone's ancestors came from another country, which again not true for people indigenous to Turtle.

01:18:35
Speaker 3: Island, right. I mean it's oversimplified, like you see what she's saying. But it's what frustrates me more there is that if this were a normal human interaction, she would then be talking about her family exactly.

01:18:48
Speaker 2: She's like, for example, my family's from x y Z place we don't know. She doesn't offer any information, and then Russell responds, I'm part Cherokee, which number one one contradicts what Bonnie just said, but he says it in such a way where it seems like he's supporting Bonnie's statement. So it's either weird acting or.

01:19:08
Speaker 3: Just it's not the kid's fault.

01:19:10
Speaker 2: It's bad writing.

01:19:12
Speaker 3: It's bad writing. I think that it's genuinely like a writer not even thinking hard enough to realize that that's a contradictory statement for sure.

01:19:20
Speaker 2: And then if Russell is Afro Indigenous, we learn nothing more about that part of his identity because.

01:19:27
Speaker 3: We learn that he is part Cherochy and he's it's implied he's descended from enslaved people, right sol.

01:19:34
Speaker 2: But that's the point, Like there's no attention or care about any character's cultural heritage or ethnic heritage except for the white kid whose family's from Ireland.

01:19:48
Speaker 3: And which is like, you know, Irish heritage valid, great, love it, We've got it, we love it. But it is it is glaring that in this like fairly diverse cast of kids that it's only the white kid who's I feel like and this is not to put down my Irish brethren, but it is sort of present the way that the very real oppression of Irish people, which again is it's not really said who why things were hard? And then we came to America? Who was oppressing us? Why America? Like you know, all of these questions that there are clear answers for, but that it's presented that like Irish people are uniquely oppressed in a way that is just like, no, this is this is how colonial oppression works. You know, it's not explained what the oppression is and it's sort of presented as like and this is the only time that's ever happened, which again is like, you know, this movie is like obviously a bad educational tool if that's what it's supposed to be, which I don't think it is. But but it's just like, okay, if we're acknowledging that Russell's ancestors were enslaved, like we know nothing about Bonnie's ancestors. Like, it's just I think it presents this weird form of in the way that I think Irish culture is sometimes sort of used as a way of being like, well, white people have been oppressed too, and you're like okay, like okay, but that but but it's I feel like it's sometimes used as a way to obvious gate how disproportionately non white cultures are oppressed by white cultures, right, So it just feels like I'm not opposed to the premise. Well, I don't even know if that's true. I'm not opposed to the premise of like acknowledging oppression of the Irish, which by the way, is not a completely white culture, but like, I'm not opposed to that, but it is weird to do it in the framing device of a heritage fair and not acknowledge any other heritage. Not only not acknowledge any other heritage, but not acknowledge any other culture's oppression.

01:22:07
Speaker 2: Right, except for in very passing again Bizarrow lines of dialogue when Yah Russell says, well, at least the Irish people were paid. Just mind boggling.

01:22:19
Speaker 3: I think it sucks that they made a kid say that, I know.

01:22:23
Speaker 2: And then you have Bonnie Lopez, who we can presume because we have to presume because the movie doesn't give us any more information, but we could potentially presume that she's Latina based on her last name and her father who we meet at the end.

01:22:42
Speaker 3: It seems like she is like a first generation American, but that's all we know, and we only know that at the very end. And I think that they're also kind of trafficking in some cultural stereotypes around immigrant parents there too, because Bonnie is there's a lot of pressure on her to go to med school, there's a lot of pressure on her to excel. She kind of implies it multiple points in the movie that like if she doesn't do well in school, her parents are going to be or her dad specifically is going to be very upset with her, which is, you know, like just a stereotype around immigrant parents in the US writ large for sure, that is presented with absolutely no nuance because we don't know anything about her family. It's like a shock. I was honestly shocked we met her father at all.

01:23:29
Speaker 2: Same Yeah, and he's truly on screen for fifteen seconds at the very end of the movie.

01:23:34
Speaker 3: And what I found to be ultimately a kind of depressing interaction because first of all, the movie does not tell us that Bonnie actually wants to play basketball, and then at the end she gets to, but it's only sort of through deception.

01:23:49
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's because Riley O'Reilly is like, hey, Bonnie's dad, you need to let her play so that she can get an internship or a scholarship or whatever my potato factory. So let her play basketball.

01:24:04
Speaker 3: And then he's like, oh, great, okay, I'll let her do that now. And then Bonnie says whatever you say, dad, and you're like, ooh, that's bleak like that. You know, She's like, well, I don't think that relationship was improved at all, So yeah, I don't know's there's also a lot of references to like American individualism and you know, implying that, and I think that this is like again where like the heritage messaging gets a little muddled, is like it. I think there's a specific line of dialogue that I have so many notes, I can't find it. But there's a specific line of dialogue that like references where it's like and it is a sort of satirical line of dialogue because it's before we find out he's Irish the reveal, but that like America is a place where you can really be an individual who cares about your heritage. I think it's something that his dad says, yeah, and so I think so. But I don't think that the movie really does a lot to push back on the fact that it's very possible to be an individual in other cultures. It's sort of presented as like America is the only place you can be a distinct individual, and other cultures are so all consuming that if you engage with them even a little, you will shrink a foot or sprout a beard, or like begin dancing uncontrollably, and so like being American is presented as the norm and.

01:25:28
Speaker 2: The cure to your leprechaun disease.

01:25:32
Speaker 3: Yeah. So yeah, there's just like this is ultimately in a movie that is supposed to be about Ireland, it is way more about America, yes, and about American understanding of other cultures, and I think it is kind of like an interesting case study there because it's like like most like American propagandistic systems, like it's only interested in presenting broad stereotypes and saying we're fine with this, but ultimately you're American, right, which is why I think part of why and also just because I assume this movie was made in forty five minutes, why the actual facts about Irish culture are? You know, there are facts there, there's other facts sort of half there, and then there's just broad stereotypes presented all alongside each other. Really hard to distinguish, especially if you're a kid watching this, distinguishing what's real and what isn't sure because it is like being Irish means you could be a leprechaun. That was sort of my takeaway. It's not really pushedback on that. There's just Irish people.

01:26:39
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, because I think every well, okay, it seems as though Riley O'Reilly has hired nothing but Irish expats slash immigrants.

01:26:52
Speaker 3: To work in his potato factory, right, which does make all Irish people seem deceptive and evil. Also not a great vibe, but.

01:26:59
Speaker 2: It's also like, well, are they also leprechaun? Like the movie again, the world building is.

01:27:04
Speaker 3: We have no idea. I'm I think it is implied via Seamus that any Irish person has the ability to become a Leprechaun. And it also kind of gets a little bit eugenicsy because they're like, oh, well, Kyle's not full Irish, so he can only become half Leprechaun. And you're like, I'm not loving the how Matthey we're getting with this. It's again, this is nothing the movie is intending to do. The movie is just I think, intending to come out on time. But it is interesting the kind of crutches they use to accomplish that. I guess I.

01:27:44
Speaker 2: Wonder if there were like white children in two thousand and one, and there were on there were two of them who saw this movie and perhaps felt seen by the riot by the Kyle character not knowing and like being curious about his cultural identity and heritage but not really knowing anything about it.

01:28:10
Speaker 3: But other than that, I think that that's what the movie ultimately kind of does that felt unique to me, was acknowledged. This kind of I think pretty common but not often acknowledged truth that like, and I think that that is like a tool of colonialism is if you are completely you know, if you as a white, a white American, are completely estranged from your culture of origin and encouraged to believe that you are just American, you are therefore encouraged to believe that America belongs to you. So I think it is like it is a tool of colonialism to estrange anyone from their culture. But it's kind of like this different pernicious thing with white cultures specifically.

01:28:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.

01:28:56
Speaker 3: And also this movie doesn't care about women, obvious, they said women suck and they're boring Bonnie, Bonnie. I'm curious. It did remind me a bit about how I mean, because Disney Channel dcoms very often have a little romance, to the point where it felt curious that the what I think would ordinarily be a romance between Kyle and Bonnie was not expanded upon a little more. And I wonder, I don't know, I just I'm putting that out there because there is you know, the further you go back in time, the more resistance there is to showing an interracial romantic interest. And I can't think of a ton of d cooms where that happens. I'm not stating that that's what's happening here. It also could just be that the movie is a mess, but I did want to shut that out. And also that Bonnie, as with any many women characters, seems to only care about what happens to Kyle. She has no life outside. The one thing we know about her is that she's very smart.

01:30:05
Speaker 2: She's in charge of a lot of extracurricular clubs.

01:30:08
Speaker 3: But it doesn't appear that she has any friends because I wouldn't for much of the movie describe her and Kyle as friends, right. It seems like they're kind there's kind of an antagonistic relationship, but we don't really see her talk to anybody else. She sort of just walks out of the ether and it's like, Kyle, are you irish or not?

01:30:26
Speaker 2: Her whole function in the story, yeah, is to support Kyle's journey that he's going.

01:30:32
Speaker 3: Journey to being irish, which is like so silly, And again it just there are small, as with most of these movies, small modifications to the story that include Bonnie being like, for example, like it still can be Kyle's story, but like how would it not help the story for her to say, like, for example, this is my connection to my culture, and I find it very affirming. It's very important to me. I like blah blah blah, get specific about it that helps tell the story. So it just feels like this weird void where like, you know, to speculate, a white writer doesn't know anything about any cultures that aren't their own and didn't even bother to research it for the sake of this character. Right, same goes for Russell, really any character, and also frankly the same goes for Kyle because there's really not a lot of Irish information in the story. There's a lot of stuff, just.

01:31:36
Speaker 2: A lot of either conflation or like things that your average American associates with Irish cultures, such as leprechauns, pots of gold at the end of a rainbow, the color green, Like the amount of green in the production design in this movie is astonishing.

01:31:57
Speaker 3: Which I mean again, this is like in the same way that Dcom's had like a Hanuka movie Capital h this is these Saint Patrick's Day movie, I think just because they didn't have one, and so it feels very rushy and very like what are people like it's it's more presenting the commercial holiday versus anything else, because I mean, and there is you know, the leprechauns are a bit of Irish folklore. In American media, they're presented it seems like pretty incorrectly. I did a little bit of did you do some leprechaun research? A little bit. They're they're wearing red most of the time. They're not even usually wearing green.

01:32:38
Speaker 2: This is correct. I did a little bit of research, and I mean suffice it to say that everything we see a lot of what we see in this movie is either it's just like a home a stereotype, or an oversimplification of it, or just like flat out incorrect. I forgot to say that part of my just general history with Irish culture in Ireland is that I also have been to Ireland a couple of times, mostly to do comedy and.

01:33:07
Speaker 3: To go to see Titanic related things.

01:33:11
Speaker 2: Because I went to Northern Ireland, which I know is a different country than Ireland, just so listeners know that I know their distinction. I went to Belfast to visit the Titanic Museum, of course, but also when I was in Dublin, I went to the National Leprechaun Museum of Ireland. And I will say that I forgot everything I learned because it was seven years ago. Okay, so I don't really didn't really retain, but I remember learning a lot about Irish folklore, folklore specific to leprechauns, how it's almost always misrepresented in popular media. So yeah, I found it very interesting. Yeah again, this movie's representation of leprechauns. You know, it's I would say, not super accurate, safety say.

01:34:04
Speaker 3: And it's like again, it's just it's it's the disney fied version of it, but like also something even weirder than that, and I can't really under I don't understand what the hell's going on. Dcoms were Look say what you will, because most of them are bad, but there is a lawlessness to a dcom that I find very nostalgically appealing, where like they were doing whatever, oh, they were doing whatever and just throwing They said, here's your slop, kids, and we were and we were loving them.

01:34:37
Speaker 2: Here's your here's the spaghetti slash weird glass noodle dish that's surrounded by romaine lettuce and an enormous bowl. Throw it against the wall and see what sticks.

01:34:48
Speaker 3: Eat up, bitch, and like we and I was eating up. I was slurping it up and loving it, and so was acclaimed genius Ryan Coogler. So look, I'm glad that mister Kogler brought this to our attention. I would be really curious how he felt on a rewatch. I did want to just share because we've got to wrap up, but I just want to share. I read an interview with the screenwriter that was like refreshingly honest. I believe Andrew Price is his name. This was an interview online from a while ago where he basically admits he did no research. So he's asked the movie centers on heritage. Is that an aspect of life you feel strongly about? And he says I used his search for heritage as a jumping off point for what I hoped to be a more personal story. After reading my first draft, my wife kept trying to convince me I was writing about a boy discovering and coming to terms with being gay. I was more interested in a boy who has to rediscover himself. Since I'm not a leprechaun, I needed defend. This is such a weird interview. He's like it's not about being gay. I'm not a laprechaun. Since I'm not a leprechaun, I needed to find something about Kyle that I could relate to and make personal. Not to harp on my own life experience, but for me, high school was very easy, but college was like an ice bath. I wanted Kyle to have those personal feelings of security followed by confusion, alienation, and fear culminating in a newfound confidence and joy. So I think that was his way of saying, I do not feel strongly about heritage at all. I'm not gay and I'm not a laprechaun, and so that's interesting. A follow up question, I love the character detail that Riley O'Reilly invented potato chips. How much research into Irish history and folklore did you do? The writer replies, I did a little research into the culture, read books and watched some Irish dancing, as well as ate some of the food. However, I didn't want to feel hemmed in by mythology and wanted my story to come from my own imagination. I use what I read as color, but didn't go too deeply in the actual folklore. So if there was any question, he was like, I read a book and I ate a piece of cabbage and I watched River Dance, and then I was kind of like, I get it. And then he just freeform jazzed all over Ireland since I'm not a leprechaun, which I think is his way of saying, since I'm not Irish, since I'm not a leprecaun. So it's just like I don't know, I don't know, and then there and then the interview ends like have you written another movie since this? And he's like, no, no one wants them for some reason. It's funny. It's funny. Men.

01:37:43
Speaker 2: In my research about leprechauns, I learned that listeners from Ireland please share your experience with this, but I learned that a not insignificant number of Irish people believe in leprechauns currently or believe they once existed in the past.

01:38:09
Speaker 3: Okay, so Irish listeners sound off, Yeah, is this is this accurate?

01:38:14
Speaker 5: Are we?

01:38:14
Speaker 3: Yeah? And and if you do believe in leprechauns, tell us I'm I'm open. I'm open to being swayed. I believe in all sorts of shit.

01:38:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, we we you know, many of us believe in I'm a Taurus, therefore I'm I'm stubborn, and also I like to lie down a lot on a comfy bed.

01:38:37
Speaker 3: It's true, it's true. I've seen it, so you know that. So it doesn't pass the Bachdel test, and I wouldn't even say it comes close. There is one exchange that I noticed between women that was like a teacher. That's like the science teacher talking to a student that randomly gets a name, and we learned about magnets and that becomes relevant later. So I would have been able, I would have given it a pass as a relevant exchange of dialogue. But we don't know what the teacher's name is.

01:39:10
Speaker 2: So and I entirely forgot about that conversation. So if it's not a very memorable moment it was, Yeah, I'm not too sure about that.

01:39:19
Speaker 3: It's a nice try. I was gonna say nice try, but obviously they were trying.

01:39:24
Speaker 2: Not a try at all. Yeah, Like I mean Kyle's mom, who does have a name. Kate and Bonnie will appear here and there throughout the story. Sometimes there will be like plot relevant they.

01:39:37
Speaker 3: Say that they're both important characters.

01:39:39
Speaker 2: They are, but then they'll also get jettisoned out of the main action of the story for large swaths of it.

01:39:47
Speaker 3: So yes, not doing a.

01:39:49
Speaker 2: Great job there. Yeah, the movie does not pass the Bechdel test. What about our nipple scale though, our scale, god, our scale where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. I'm gonna give it a half nipple, Like it's not I'm kind of maybe a nipple. I don't know, I'm gonna.

01:40:11
Speaker 3: Give it one because women are in it.

01:40:16
Speaker 2: Right, women are in it, and it's trying to say something about being proud of your cultural heritage, but it's also saying a lot about how but if you're American, that's the most important thing, and go, go, go America America number one.

01:40:33
Speaker 3: I be very curious if that is something that appeared in the first draft, or if that was like a disneyfied element. I'm always very curious about how these because like media for children is so deliberate in that way, right. I would love to see a second interview with this writer where he's like, first of all, I'm not a leprechaun.

01:40:48
Speaker 2: Second of all, Second of all, college was really hard that.

01:40:54
Speaker 3: That interview is so iconic to me, where it was like a pretty long interview and I'm like, this guy is like the lights are not on. Amazing that he has a produced screenwriting credit and like three women in history do yeah, awesome.

01:41:12
Speaker 1: Bleak.

01:41:13
Speaker 2: Anyways, Yeah, so one nipple, uh, you know all the things we talked about, and I will give my nipple two leprechauns.

01:41:24
Speaker 3: I'm gonna give it one nipple and I'm gonna give the nipple to I think just the plot point that the grandfather Leprechaun is shackled to a basketball hoop, that is like such a funny detail that clearly no one in the movie knows what to do with. We cannot decide if we can actually see him or not. Sometimes we can. Sometimes the entire gymnasium decides this game is so important that it doesn't matter if there's an old man shackled to the away teams basketball hoop or not. And that is very Santa University coded to me. I really appreciated that that They're like, we don't know what to do with it, so it just is take it or leave it, and I'm taking it. No, I'm taking it. I'm claiming it.

01:42:12
Speaker 2: It's a very brave storytelling choice.

01:42:14
Speaker 3: Yes, well, there you have it.

01:42:17
Speaker 2: Listeners for more movies that are about Ireland slash Irish people slash maybe leprechauns. Yeah, refer to our Matreon this month because we're covering a few more.

01:42:33
Speaker 3: Yes, please join us in celebrating. Well, it depends. We're going to give you a charcutery board. If you're already a matron, you already know. We're doing both movies written and directed by Irish artists and movies that are about Ireland and may or may not do better than the movie we discussed today. But once again, well, actually I guess I'm giving I'm going to take back my nipple from Bonnie, Sorry Bonnie and give it to Ryan Coogler. Ohay, this episode possible. Thank you for making interviews fun to watch. And we've already covered Sinners on the show, so you can listen to that. We've covered black Panthers, so plenty of Coogler on the pod. You can yeah find us over on the Matreon or on Instagram. And with that, shall we go to the end of the rainbow and then engage in ancient warfare?

01:43:29
Speaker 2: Yes?

01:43:30
Speaker 3: Awesome.

01:43:31
Speaker 2: Bye, Okay Bye.

01:43:35
Speaker 3: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and produced by Me, Jamie Loftus and.

01:43:41
Speaker 2: Me Caitlyn Dorante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie Lichtermann.

01:43:46
Speaker 3: And edited by Caitlyn Durrante. Ever Heard of Them? That's Me?

01:43:50
Speaker 2: And our logo and merch and all of our artwork, in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus, Ever heard of her?

01:43:57
Speaker 3: Oh My God? And our theme song, by the way, was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski. Iconic and especial thanks to the one and only Aristotle Ascevedo.

01:44:09
Speaker 2: For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash Spectelcast