Waking Ned
Encyclopedia
Waking Ned is a 1998 comedy film
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 by English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 writer and director Kirk Jones. It stars Ian Bannen
Ian Bannen
Ian Bannen was a Scottish character actor and occasional leading man.-Early life and career:Bannen was born in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, the son of Clare and John James Bannen, a lawyer. Bannen served in the British Army after attending St Aloysius' College, Glasgow and Ratcliffe College,...

, David Kelly
David Kelly (actor)
David Kelly is an Irish actor, who has been in regular film and television work since the 1950s.-Acting career:Playing everything from Beckett to Shakespeare, he has appeared in Theatre, TV and film constantly since 1959...

 and Fionnula Flanagan. Kelly was nominated for a Screen Actors' Guild
Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture
The Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role is an award given by the Screen Actors Guild to honor the finest acting achievements in film.-Superlatives:-Notes:...

 award for his role as Michael O'Sullivan. The film is set in Ireland but was filmed on location in the Isle of Man
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...

. It was produced by Canal+
Canal+
Canal+ is a French premium pay television channel launched in 1984. It is 80% owned by the Canal+ Group, which in turn is owned by Vivendi SA. The channel broadcasts several kinds of programming, mostly encrypted...

 and the British studio Tomboy Films and distributed by the American company Fox Searchlight Pictures
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Fox Searchlight Pictures, established in 1998, is a film division of Fox Filmed Entertainment alongside the larger Fox studio 20th Century Fox...

.

Plot

When word reaches Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen
Ian Bannen
Ian Bannen was a Scottish character actor and occasional leading man.-Early life and career:Bannen was born in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, the son of Clare and John James Bannen, a lawyer. Bannen served in the British Army after attending St Aloysius' College, Glasgow and Ratcliffe College,...

) and Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly
David Kelly (actor)
David Kelly is an Irish actor, who has been in regular film and television work since the 1950s.-Acting career:Playing everything from Beckett to Shakespeare, he has appeared in Theatre, TV and film constantly since 1959...

), two elderly best friends, that someone in their tiny Irish village of 52 people in Tulaigh Mhór (Tullymore) has won the Irish National Lottery's Lotto game, they, along with Jackie's wife Annie (Fionnula Flanagan), go to great lengths to find the winner so they can share the wealth. After a chicken-dinner plot to narrow down their list of suspects, they pay a midnight visit to the only absentee: Ned Devine (Jimmy Keogh
Jim Keogh
Jim Keogh is the author of more than 70 books including five ...For Dummies books.Keogh introduced PC programming across America in his Popular Electronics magazine column in 1982, four years after Apple Computer started in a garage....

). They find Ned in his home, still holding the ticket in his hand, a smile on his face and dead of shock. Jackie is later convinced by a dream that the deceased Ned wants to share the winnings with his friends, as he has no family to claim the ticket.

Elsewhere in the village, Maggie O'Toole (Susan Lynch
Susan Lynch
Susan Lynch is an actor from Northern Ireland.-Early life:Lynch was born in Corrinshego, Newry, County Armagh, Northern Ireland to an Italian mother and Irish father. Her brother is actor John Lynch, she has a sister, Pauline, who is a drama teacher at St...

) continues to spurn the romantic interests of her old flame, "Pig" Finn (James Nesbitt
James Nesbitt
James Nesbitt is a Northern Irish actor. Born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Nesbitt grew up in the nearby village of Broughshane, before moving to Coleraine, County Londonderry. He wanted to become a teacher like his father, so he began a degree in French at the University of Ulster...

), a local pig farmer. Finn is convinced they belong together, as he thinks he is the father of her son Maurice, but she cannot abide him due to his ever present odor of pigs.

After discovering that the lottery winnings are far greater than anticipated, Jackie and Michael are forced to involve the entire village in fooling the claim inspector. The 51 villagers enter a pact to pretend that Ned is alive and well, by having Michael pose as him, even to the point of pretending Ned's funeral is a service for Michael when the claim inspector wanders into the church. However, the local curmudgeon, Lizzie Quinn (Eileen Dromey), decides not to enter the pact and attempts to blackmail the entire village by reporting the fraud and receiving ten percent of the lottery share. As the villagers celebrate their winnings at the local pub, she attempts to phone the lottery office from a phone box outside the village. Before she can deliver her message, though, the departing claim inspector loses control of his car, forcing an oncoming van to crash into the phone box, sending it plummeting off a tall cliff and crashing to the ground below with Quinn still inside.

At the celebration, Jackie spots Maggie, who is content that Finn is going to give up pig farming to marry her now that he can afford to. Jackie approves, adding that Maurice needs a father in his life. "More than seven million pounds
Irish pound
The Irish pound was the currency of Ireland until 2002. Its ISO 4217 code was IEP, and the usual notation was the prefix £...

?" she asks, nodding to her son and revealing that the elderly Ned was actually Maurice's father. Jackie urges her to claim the entire fortune, but Maggie is sure that Maurice needs a father more and the villagers need the money. The film closes with Jackie, Michael, and several others standing on a hill and raising their glasses to Ned, toasting him for his gift to the village.

Production

The film was shot on the Isle of Man, with the village of Cregneash
Cregneash
Cregneash or Cregneish is a remote village situated on Mull Hill in the south of the Isle of Man.Annual Manx festivals are held in Cregneash and it is home to a flock of the rare four-horned Loaghtan sheep. Much of the village forms a "Living Museum" dedicated to the preservation of the...

 standing in for the fictional Irish village of Tulaigh Mhór.

Reception

Waking Ned grossed $24.79 million dollars in North America and $30.46 million internationally, for a grand total of $55.25 million worldwide. The film received positive reviews and holds a "fresh" rating of 83% on the film aggregator website, Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

. Kirk Jones was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer
BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer
-Best British Director, Producer or Writer in the First Film:*2006 - Red Road - Andrea Arnold**Black Sun – Gary Tarn**Pierrepoint – Christine Langan**London to Brighton – Paul Andrew Williams...

. The film was nominated for and won several other awards including the Screen Actors Guild
Screen Actors Guild
The Screen Actors Guild is an American labor union representing over 200,000 film and television principal performers and background performers worldwide...

, Satellite Awards
Satellite Awards
The Satellite Awards are an annual award given by the International Press Academy. The awards were originally known as the Golden Satellite Awards.- Film :*Best Actor – Drama*Best Actor – Musical or Comedy*Best Actress – Drama...

, and the National Board of Review.

Further reading

  • Waking Ned Devine: An Original Screenplay by Kirk Jones (1999) ScreenPress Books,
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