Set, initially at least, in late 60s Dublin, The Miracle Club harnesses a kind of Hollywood-sanctioned theme-park version of Irishness. It’s an Ireland whose streets teem with bonny red-headed urchins, with cheeks scrubbed carbolic pink. An Ireland in which gruff men in braces rule the roost, but struggle to tell one end of a potato from the other without their womenfolk to keep them in order. It’s an Ireland that Chrissie (Laura Linney) fled 40 years ago under a cloud of purse-lipped judgment and needling gossip. Now she returns from her life in Boston to find that her estranged mother has died but little else has changed. On the advice of a kindly priest, she decides to embark on an emotionally healing pilgrimage to Lourdes, alongside her former best friend Eileen (Kathy Bates) and Lil (Maggie Smith), the mother of her long-lost first love. It’s trite and predictable stuff: the laughs are forced; the pathos is over-stewed.
