Waking Ned Devine is a movie that came onto my radar about a year ago.  One of my friends was watching it as I was using a computer not far off.  When he watched it, I was around for about five minutes during the middle of it before running off to go see Legally Blonde 2, or do something equally as stupid.

The couple bits that I did see were interesting.  Not enough that I had to rush out and watch it, rather rush back in the house and watch it, but still it did look like it would be worth checking out.

The basic premise of the movie is Ned Devine wins the space lottery for a million space bucks, but the shock of winning gives him a fatal heart attack.  It is hard to cash in your ticket when you are no longer alive, so two of Ned’s friends decide to cash it in for him.  They justify it by reasoning, “It’s what Ned would have wanted.”

The tricky part is that Ned signed the back of the ticket before winning.  This means that only Ned could cash in the ticket.  This is where the movie begins to really pick up as the friends decide that they could simply have one of them claim to be Ned and cash the ticket.

What they don’t know is that for a ticket this size, an official from the lottery comes down to interview the winner and check everything out.  This is where things start to get really dicey as the duo tries to keep up the charade only to learn that more of the townsfolk might be needed to fool the inspector. (Don’t worry about spoilers, it says that much on the back of the box!)

I really liked this movie.  I was worried that it would only be a so-so movie, but it turned out to be great.

There was an additional love story in the movie that didn’t have a whole lot to do with the actual plot.  It was between a pig farmer who allegedly smells really bad despite all the soaps everyone keeps giving him and the mother of his son.

She doesn’t want anything to do with him because he always smells like a pigfarmer.  I imagine that is pretty gross and all, but she’s pretty shallow about it.  At the end of the movie he puts the girl’s father in charge of the pigfarm, takes a shower, and gets the girl.

How romantic.

If you haven’t seen the movie Waking Ned Devine, I would recommend adding it to your netflix queue.  It’s more fun than it looks to be.

‘To Ned Devine, may we forever be in your debt.’