St. Patrick’s Day for kids

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with your kids and Colm Meaney.

Meaney, a quintessential Irish actor, was born in Dublin. However, he is best known for playing a Scottish role, Chief Miles O’Brien on two American TV series: “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

Today we find him back home on the Emerald Isle in two films and on the Isle of Man for a third. Two of these films, “War of the Buttons” (1994) and “Owd Bob” (1997), are sure winners for the grade school crowd as is one lacking Meaney, “The Secret of Roan Inish” (1994).

The fourth film (with Meaney), “Into the West” (1992), is darker than the usual light children’s fare as it follows two young boys (aged 12 and eight) running away on a magical white horse to the west coast of Ireland.

Underlying their journey are themes of grief, poverty, corruption and bigotry.

The film features a grieving father who has lost his wife in childbirth. Because they are “travelers” (Irish gypsies), they were turned away from the hospital by “settled people.” Consequently, the unemployed father gives up his leadership position among the travelers and tries to raise his two boys in a grim housing project.

A mysterious white horse follows the boys’ grandfather to a travelers’ camp close to the boys’ home. The story of the boys and the horse eventually is tied to the underlying family problems.

“Into the West’s” director, Mike Newell, is known for such films as “The Mona Lisa Smile” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

He is the first British director to undertake a Harry Potter movie, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (2005). Jim Sheridan, Ireland’s foremost director wrote the screenplay for “Into the West” (more about him next week).

“The Secret of Roan Inish” begins with a mother’s funeral in 1946. Because her grieving father cannot care for her, the young daughter (aged 10) is sent to live with her grandparents in a West Ireland fishing village.

There she discovers the secrets of why her family left an island called Roan Inish and what happened to her baby brother.

She is helped in the search by her cousin, a teenage boy.

“Roan Inish” is one of my favorite family films.

You will have some difficulty understanding the actors’ Irish accents, a reason to watch the film with your kids so you can figure out what’s happening together.

It’s a terrific story about a beautiful place — and far from a simple-minded just-for-kids movie.

“Roan Inish” was directed by American John Sayles and poetically photographed by one of the world’s best cinematographers, Haskell Wexler.

A somewhat lighter-weight but still worthwhile film is “War of the Buttons,” directed by John Roberts.

It is the only one of the four films where mothers remain intact.

This movie features Colm Meaney’s character and a bunch of other adults trying to keep the lid on two “warring” gangs of grade school boys (aided by grade school girls). The film’s theme is similar to that of the book “Lord of the Flies” but no one really gets hurt and the worst retaliation is cutting off the enemy’s buttons. Class differences also are touched upon in this Irish interpretation of the French classic novel “Guerre des Boutons.”

“Owd Bob” (a border collie) roams around the Isle of Man, which lies in the Irish Sea between the United Kingdom and Ireland.

For some reason, film critics ignored “Owd Bob.” I love this film but, then, I have border collies.

People probably live on the Isle of Man for the same reason that people live in Sisters. It is a really beautiful place.

Peaceful as it seems, dark secrets lie beneath the island’s idyllic surface and they have to do with dogs and sheep as well as the people who keep them.

James Cromwell (of “Babe” fame) plays the crotchety grandfather of an orphaned American boy (Dylan Provencher).

Colm Meaney plays the kindly neighbor with a comely daughter (Jemima Rooper), whose mother (yes, you guessed it) dies.

If you have questions about Irish films, ask Shawn O’Hern at Sisters Video.

His name gives him away.