Now THIS is an Otter Family Favorite. We used to watch it every single St. Patrick's Day night, often inviting friends over to enjoy it too, having (of course) corned beef and cabbage for dinner, and just a wonderful time.*

Sure, it's fakey Disney schmaltz, and extremely silly to boot. But it has SERIOUS honey Sean Connery in it, and cutie-pie Janet Munro (astute fans will remember her from The Crawling Eye) and a silly pseudo-Irish theme song (Sean Connery, singing, oh man!) and some really kickass special effects for the time (and the DVD includes a short telling how they did it- I assumed it was blue-screen double-exposure, but no! it's even more amazing...)

Mr. Otter is horrified that I didn't mention the performances by the actors who play Darby and the King of the Leprechauns, Brian Conners...but although they are indeed good, they are also kind of stock Irish...and we all know what we're here for anyway: Sean.

The reality police take umbrage at the ending, since the way the King gets Darby out of his predicament wouldn't have saved his doughter, since it wasn't a wish that harmed her in the first place...but hey, it's a Disney movie, it doesn't have to make sense. And my, isn't Sean young and handsome, yowza!

And the Banshee and the coach are really scary...both Mr. Otter and I were scared by this as kids (and I do have to tell you here that this movie was released the year that Otter was born...and Mr. Otter saw it in the theatre. You do the math...!)

Anyway. Don't be too critical, just pop a beer (prefereably not green) and enjoy this treasure. And if you're serving corned beef, cabbage and dill pickles, I'd be glad to join you...

*Except for the time we saw it after a couple of years hiatus, when we didn't have time to have a St. Paddy's Day party...and during which I started learning to fiddle.

Then we watched this movie again...and oh my god, it was all I could do to sit through it.

The fiddling, which I had heretofore thought was really good, is not only NOT done by Darby (and not even faked very well, he's just awful at it) but is not even real fiddling. It's not even IRISH MUSIC, for god's sake! One of the shorts included with the DVD shows Walt Disney going to Ireland to get some 'real leprechauns' for this movie...you'd think he could also have gone down to the nearest pub for some real music...but no. With the exception of the bagpipe tune played when Darby first enters the Leprechaun cave (the tune being Rakes of Mallow) all the rest of the movie is Hollywood studio violinists playing stuff in 6/8 time so it sounds like an Irish jig...but isn't. Kind of like cotton candy, looks like food but melts when you try to eat it.

Tonight I managed to get through the movie without screaming at the music, but there was at least one point where it was so bad I had to laugh hysterically.

Ah well. It's still a great movie, you really should see it.