It’s 1975. Brian Leary (Nick Thurston), our 18-year-old hero, has never known anything but the poor, insulated, and sometimes violent reality of his home in Brooklyn. His father is an abusive alcoholic, most of his friends have no ambition, and his brother has run afoul of the law. But Brian has a hidden talent: he can paint. He spends hours in his basement, working on watercolors that no one sees. No one, that is, until he meets Shauna (Leslie Murphy), who gives Brian the recognition he needs to believe in himself. Yes, White Irish Drinkers is about as coming-of-age as a coming-of-age story gets. It’s all here: the struggle to better yourself, the unrealized potential of youth, and, of course, the eternal, saving power of romance.
Unfortunately, none of it is very interesting. You’ve seen this movie before, perhaps on cable, late at night, when you have convinced yourself there is nothing better to do. And like many television movies, White Irish Drinkers is the kind you can enter and exit at any given moment without much sense of loss. For nearly two hours, Brian goes through the motions of growing up. He hems and he haws — pursuing his art, chasing the girl of his dreams. The final outcome, however, is never in doubt, for Brian’s struggle remains almost entirely external. Once his obstacles have been removed, as inevitably they will be, he can go on his merry, thoroughly of-age way.
The similarity between this film and the ones you see on TV is no coincidence. Director, writer, and producer John Gray has spent most of his career in television, directing films and mini-series for PBS, CBS, and Hallmark Hall of Fame. White Irish Drinkers is Gray’s longtime pet project, financed out of his own pocket and shot in 17 days. Despite its flaws, it has a rosy, candid quality that belies the script’s autobiographical origins. There is something lovable about Brian, however thickheaded and unimaginative he is. And there is a modest but bittersweet tinge of nostalgia to Gray’s vision of 1975 Brooklyn, the time and place where he grew up himself.
It’s hard, though, to buy into either the character or the setting when they’re painted in such broad strokes.
When Brian’s friend Todd, the only one who went to college, comes back from his summer coursework at Carnegie Mellon University, he takes a lot of flak from his friends about the ways he’s changed. In one scene, Todd pulls out some weed at a party. All his friends refuse to partake. Jerry (Henry Zebrowski), who has just applied to work as a garbageman and has no plans to leave Brooklyn, sums up the gang’s philosophy: “Just fucking tradition, you hump. We don’t do smoke, we don’t do pills, we don’t do needles. We are white Irish drinkers. We drink! That is what we do!”
This is a significant moment, because it’s tradition that seems to keep Brian from leaving his neighborhood and finding his own way. But Gray never takes that idea past Jerry’s rather superficial formulation. White Irish Drinkers gives little sign of what tradition means to Brian or why he feels its pull so strongly. There are plenty of factors pushing him out of Brooklyn, but there are few keeping him there. So when Brian decides to leave it all behind, his motives are pretty clear. What’s harder to understand is why it took him so long to make the decision in the first place.
