Very well executed

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

In Dublin, one day Hubert Flynn (Pete Postlethwaite) leaves the pub and turns into a rat at home. On the next morning, the writer Phelim "Felix" Spratt (David Wilmot) visits the family and offers to write a book about Hubert. His wife Conchita Flynn (Imelda Staunton) accepts the offer and Felix moves to Hubert's room. His son Pius (Andrew Lovern) wants to kill the rat while his daughter Marietta (Kerry Condon) has a dilemma whether she introduces her boyfriend to her father or not. In Christmas, Uncle Matt (Frank Kelly) proposes to leave Hubert in a maggot farm. What will happen with the rat?"Rat" is an unfunny and senseless black humor comedy that does not work. The story uses the idea of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" but without the talent of the famous writer and also without a message. I spent 89 minutes running time without laughing and the only thing funny is people writing that this movie is hilarious. My vote is two.Title (Brazil): "Este Rato É um Espanto" ("This Rat Is Amazing")

A Irish man living in Dublin returns home from the pub to a wife who is angry at him for staying out late. The next morning, the wife awakens to find that her husband has turned into a white rat. There are many ways in which this premise could provide hilarious results. Unfortunately, Wesley Burrows, who wrote the script to "Rat", failed to think of many good ones. What results is a story that feels half-baked, a premise that was obviously not thought out very well, and questionable motivations on the part of the main characters.It takes only ten minutes for the setup of the story to be complete, and it is not enough time to get this story going. You see Irishman Hubert Flynn (Veteran actor and Academy Award nominee Pete Postlethwaite) going to a pub one night, then going home to angry wife Conchita (future Oscar nominee Imelda Staunton, "Vera Drake" (2004)). The next morning, you see Conchita and her two grown kids (daughter Kerry Condon and son Andrew Lovern) at the breakfast table. When the camera turns to show you Flynn, Postlethwaite is not there, but in his place is a rat.How did he turn into a rat? Why did he turn into a rat? Why a rat? Why not a dog, or even an elephant? The movie never explains. It could be that Hubert led a selfish life which involved being cruel to his wife and kids. However, all you see is him going to a pub, then going home. Wow, THAT makes his a really unique Irishman (Note my sarcasm if you haven't already). Even stranger, Conchita is still yelling at her husband to finish his breakfast, and doesn't care if he turned into a rat. What the movie should have shown you is Conchita discovering that her husband turned into a rat, and reacting in some way. She could have screamed in agony, or she could have thought that her husband left her, and that a rat just happened to dig around her husband's clothes. Any of those scenes would have been preferable to seeing them at the dinner table together without any explanation whatsoever as to this predicament.Even stranger than that character flaw is that the news of her husband's metamorphosis makes the local radio report. Did a reporter actually come to the house and observe the husband as a rat? If he or she did, you never see it happening. Plus, throughout the movie, you see some townspeople already knowing he's a rat, and others that don't know.As you find out, the radio report is just a cheap excuse for Phelim Spratt (David Wilmott) to appear in this story. Spratt is like an ambulance-chasing lawyer, only he's a newspaper reporter who wants to write a nonfiction book about the Flynn family and how they live with their husband as a rat. Spratt's motivation is to cash in on a phenomenon, which is wicked, but understandable.To make the story even more confusing, son Pius (Lovern) is studying to become a priest, and somehow gets it in his head that it is best to kill the rat that is his father. Why? Despite the 5th Commandment, which Pius even quotes, he also picks out a passage in Genesis about intelligent design, and how man rules over animals. Amazingly, Conchita is in favor of the idea. Even though daughter Marietta (Condon) is understandably not, I could not help but think to myself, "What is wrong with you people!?!?"Not only does this Biblical "logic" fly in the face of why Phelim Spratt is living with them, but shouldn't the family be concerned with (Gee, I don't know) trying to turn their father/husband back into a human being!?!?!I feel compelled to fault this film for being illogical, but it is a fable and it is not supposed to be realistic. However, I just don't understand the motivations of this family. If they don't want to cure Hubert, and they want to kill him, there has to be an explanation for it. If he was abusive, then there is a motivation for killing him as a rat. But if you, the audience, only know the human Hubert for five minutes, that's not enough time to establish a credible motivation on the family's behalf.There are some mildly amusing scenes, like the one where the family takes the rat Hubert to a pub, and someone buys the rat a Guinness. The rest of the movie sucks, though. It's not funny, and you spend more time wondering what is going through each family member's head than what becomes of the main characters. I like movies that are made by Irish people for Irish people, but this movie is just lazy and vapid.It's a shame too, because the director is Steve Barron, who directed the far more memorable "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (1990), "Coneheads" (1993), and Michael Jackson's iconic music video for "Billie Jean" (1982). Also, the Jim Henson Company did the special effects for the rat, and did a very good job making the rat look realistic. In fact, there are some great camera zooms where you see some great close-ups of the rat. If the script writer had put more effort into the story as other people did the special effects, this movie would be considered an underrated gem. As it stands, I don't think kids, adults, Muppet fans, or Irish people will like it.

RatHubert Flynn (Pete Postlethwaite) has had a hard day on his bread delivery round. and so, stops off for a pint on the way home to Kimmage – to wife Conchita (Imelda Staunton), daughter Marietta (Kerry Condon) and his saintly son Pius (Andrew Lovern). Inevitably one pint becomes a ‘few'. He's also under the weather. Daisy Farrell's (Veronica Duffy) expert diagnosis from the snug is Asiatic flu. Back home, with Conchita giving him some of her mind, Hubert wants only to go to bed. But Hubert hasn't the flu. There he metamorphoses into a rat.Initially normality reigns in the Flynn household in this freak circumstance of Hubert as rat. He's a bit picky about his food and the family unsure of rat habits, but widely read Uncle Matt (Frank Kelly) proves expert on all things rodent.But journalist Phelim Spratt (David Wilmot) worms his way into the home with a plan for a book, a film, a book of the film … However the satanic entrepreneurial approach is a Pandora's box and sets the film off in glorious chase of the punchline.Wesley Burrows' screenplay is in the tradition of the farce – a comic creation built around exaggeration of character and event, extremes of personality and occasion; soaked in satire and nonsense; action-driven, leading to the climactic joke that is the point of the piece.But the punchline is not the whole point. Farce should also have a point of view. Without unveiling the joke, how ought we to respond to ‘freaks', ‘aliens in our midst'? Burn them? Expel them? Exploit them? Accept them?Director Steve Barron and his cast carry off Burrows' farce with verve (with Imelda Stauntion in splendid form) according to the rules of the genre – including hilariously developing the moral debates.

How many Irish films can succeed without resorting to "faith an' begorrah" cliches? RAT doesn't. Veteran writer Wesley Burrowes has written a wildly whimsical moral tale that laughs in the face of miserable, self-pitying Irish drama with his story of the tragedy that befalls a home which the man of the house turns into a rodent. Beautifully balancing the bizarre and the mundane, this is a film that the great Irish humourist Flann O'Brien could have made. The performances are great (including the rat, courtesy of Jim Henson's company) and the cast includes Pete Postletwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off, etc), Imelda Staunton (Shakespeare in Love, Sense and Sensibility, etc), Frank Kelly (best known as 'Father Jack'), Niall Toibin (in rattling good form as the priest) and comedian Ed Byrne (although his role is a minor one, and, oddly, he doesn't get any good lines). The soundtrack by Bob Geldof and Pete Briquette perfectly capture the mock-horror of the storyline. The details of the story? Go and see it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.