When Pigs Fly

Sheila (Maggie O’Neill) finds an old rocking chair in the shed behind the bar where she works.  She gives it to her landlord Marty (Alfred Molina), a down-and-out jazz musician she’s sweet on.  What neither of them knows is that the chair is haunted by the ghosts of Lily (Marianne Faithfull), who was beaten to death by her husband Frank (Seymour Cassel), the bar owner.  Tagging along is the ghost of Ruthie (a very young Rachael Bella, all gothed up like a miniature Helena Bonham Carter), a precocious little girl.  Together they all explore the haunted past, and hatch a scheme for revenge on Frank.

One thing I value in movies is originality, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ghost horror/comedy with an indie sensibility.  But I don’t know if it adds up to anything.  It’s all so dreary and lifeless.  There are moments of whimsy, but with few exceptions (I enjoyed the dog dreaming) it’s charmless whimsy, flimsy whimsy.  There’s no heart and soul behind it, just ideas that go nowhere.  Marty’s a nice guy, Sheila’s a nice gal, Lily’s got a sad story, but so what?  I was interested to see what would happen next because the film was so unusual, not because I had any investment in the characters.  The special effects are generally well done and the performances are fine (if occasionally stilted, and it’s a bit hard to buy Cassel as an asshole) but something’s missing here.  I don’t think director Sara Driver — longtime companion of Jim Jarmusch — quite knew what to do with this odd material, so it all hangs limply on the screen, waiting for a spark.  I’m left wondering what the point is, because entertainment-wise, it only delivers sporadically.

Still, I hate to come down too hard on something so different.  Let’s call it a misfire, a combination of intriguing elements that unfortunately doesn’t ever gel into the magic it seems to be aiming for.  Rating: Fair

IMDb