By Colton Dunham OnMilwaukee.com Staff Writer Published Sep 28, 2014 at 5:06 PM

"Life’s A Breeze," an Irish comedy from director Lance Daly, is about as compelling as a primetime sitcom.

Even its monotonous title, which derives from the air freshener that hangs on the wall inside of a character’s home, suggests that the film is light and breezy rather than anything else. It aims to make us laugh with flailing, forced comedic beats while squandering on its promises.

At the center of the comedy, which made its Milwaukee premiere at the Milwaukee Film Festival on Sept. 27, is Nan (Fionnula Flanagan), an old-fashioned Irish hoarder who doesn’t mind living amongst the clutter inside of her Dublin home. Her fractious four grown children decide to surprise her with a housecleaning, so they assign 13-year-old Emma (newcomer Kelly Thornton) to take Nan out of her house for the day while they clean, despite the fact that Emma thinks she’s "old and weird."

This unannounced gift of sorts is indeed surprising to Nan as she returns with Emma. The trash has been taken out and the old has been replaced with the new. As her children gleefully smile as they take her on a tour of her renewed, cleaner home, Nan seems less than pleased especially when they reach her bedroom where her old mattress has been replaced with "Ikea’s finest."

This typically wouldn’t be an issue, but for Nan, who states her distrust of banks, tells her children that all of her life savings (nearly a million Euros to be exact) was stuffed inside of her old mattress. At first, the children don’t know whether they should immediately believe her because her memory might be fading. They’re soon convinced, however, that she’s telling the truth, thus kicking a rapid, countrywide treasure hunt through the dumps and recycling centers of Dublin into high gear to find the mattress and the money that’s inside of it.

With a wacky plot like this, it would be easy to imagine that director Lance Daly, who directed the surprising coming-of-age 2008 romance "Kisses," would fully embrace the wackiness and some possible drama such as questioning why Nana would rather hide the money rather than share her wealth with her children.

Instead, and to our misfortune, Daly keeps the narrative and the comedy that derives from it light and unsurprisingly sitcom-y. It has the promising set-up as a witty comedy, but it instead falls into the pits of the in-between … the in-between being the shaded wasteland between wit and seriousness. It’s essentially comedy that goes nowhere. It’s stuck.

There aren’t necessarily any laugh-until-you-wet-your-pants moments, but there are still amusing moments sprinkled throughout the film that’ll at least force you to crack a smile, if not a half-hearted chuckle such as a moment when a birthday celebration is interrupted by a stripping firefighter or a moment when Nan’s slacker son Colm (Pat Shortt) is led to believe that he had won the lottery jackpot, only to be met with disappointment as he comes to realize his family had pranked him. Even these amusing moments, however, felt forced and episodic.

Although the comedy didn’t necessarily click in the way that it should, Daly managed to bring together a cast of pure talent. It seems that Flanagan is an actress who can to do a lot with very little. Some of her most surprising moments involve her not saying anything at all. Her performance as Nan reminded me of Bruce Dern’s Oscar-nominated performance in last year’s "Nebraska." Her performance is quiet and understated, but she’s still a force -- this might be because she’s one of three characters that Daly especially favorites.

Shortt definitely adds a nice comedic touch as Colm, the underachieving son who finds himself ahead of the unemployment line than anything else, who has the daringness and desperation to spearhead the mattress hunt. The real star of the film, however, is Kelly Thornton as Emma. Along with Nan, Emma is a character who’s given a fair share of meat to gnaw on – narratively speaking, that is. Thornton delightfully brings a lot of humanity and maturity to the role, even at the age of 13. She’s most impressive in her scenes with Flanagan as their characters develop a stronger relationship.

Despite its flaws, however, "Life’s A Breeze" has a heart the size of a mattress. It has good intentions to delight rather than displease. It's not as satisfying as, say, finding a million Euros stuffed inside of a mattress, but I’ll settle nonetheless.

"Life's A Breeze": ** 1/2

"Life's A Breeze" shows one more time at the Milwaukee Film Festival on Wednesday, Oct. 8 at 4:30 p.m. at the Times Cinema. 

Colton Dunham OnMilwaukee.com Staff Writer

Colton Dunham's passion for movies began back as far as he can remember. Before he reached double digits in age, he stayed up on Saturday nights and watched numerous classic horror movies with his grandfather. Eventually, he branched out to other genres and the passion grew to what it is today.

Only this time, he's writing about his response to each movie he sees, whether it's a review for a website, or a short, 140-character review on Twitter. When he's not inside of a movie theater, at home binge watching a television show, or bragging that he's a published author, he's pursuing to keep movies a huge part of his life, whether it's as a journalist/critic or, ahem, a screenwriter.