That’s what made Waking Ned Devine, written and directed by Britisher Kirk Jones in his feature film debut, so refreshingly unusual when it was released theatrically in late 1998. Its two main protagonists, Jackie O’Shea (the late Ian Bannen) and Michael O’Sullivan (David Kelly), are old guys who don’t ever mention the fact. There’s no joking about prostates here. Jackie and Michael are just two full blooded Irish boyos who are determined to get their greedy, wrinkled mitts on a fortune.

For it seems that one resident of the tiny village of Tully More has won a huge jackpot in the Irish lottery. Jackie knows that because it’s been announced on television that the winning ticket was bought in their small town. And as Tully More is way off the beaten track, the ticket must be in the possession of a townsman. So Jackie enlists his pal Michael to help ferret out the prizeholder in hopes that they can get their hands on at least a portion of the winnings.

After many a false start the boys succeed, only to discover that the winner is Ned Devine, a man well loved in the community and also, unfortunately, stone cold dead. It seems the shock of learning he had the winning number was too much for Ned (played by Jimmy Keogh, highly convincing as the corpse) and he pegged out on the spot, as Jackie and Michael discover when they enter Ned’s cottage. But Ned signed the back of his lottery ticket before dying, so only Ned Devine can claim the money.

It’s obvious what’s coming next--Ned Devine must be alive when the lottery commission man comes from Dublin to validate the ticket. And that mandates that the citizens of Tully More band together behind the leadership of Jackie and Michael so they can pull of the deception and split the huge jackpot among themselves.

The course of true theft never does run smooth, however, and many complications ensue. Those complications, and the general air of rascality, make Waking Ned Devine reminisicent of the great, tight little comedies England’s Ealing Studio produced in the 1940s and 50s--films like Whiskey Galore, where citizens of a small island try to keep 50,000 cases of shipwrecked booze away from the authorities. And Kirk Jones, bringing his film in at just 91 minutes, shows that he can keep a plot on track while putting in enough twists and turns to make the ride even more fun. (Jones is an award-winning tv commercial director and those guys are used to tight time frames.)

The teamwork of Ian Bannen and David Kelly as the ringleaders Jackie and Michael is the heart of Waking Ned Devine. In the great tradition of Laurel and Hardy or Lucy and Desi, Kirk Jones went for physical opposites in casting his two pals. Bannen, barrel chested, with a healthy shock of white hair, is a geriatric bull, while Kelly, small and skinny, is almost birdlike. (The sight of Kelly, during a critical moment, hopping naked on a motorbike save for a helmet is surely one of the bravest bits of acting to be seen in many years.) Neither actor, both Irish by birth, is a household name, although Bannen actually got a best supporting actor Oscar nomination all the way back in 1965 for Flight of The Phoenix, playing against the likes of James Stewart and Peter Finch. As for Kelly, while he’s done films and tv work, most of his career has been on stage. He’s old enough to have acted in the premiere production of Brendan Behan’s play The Quare Fellow, and Behan’s been dead more than 35 years.

Together, Bannen and Kelly demonstrate lustily that being old is no big thing, especially if you still crave undeserved riches. Their fire and camaraderie carry Waking Ned Devine, a film whose only weakness is a secondary story about a romance between a pig farmer (James Nesbitt) and the most desirable girl in the village (Susan Lynch). When you’ve got old guys like Bannen and Kelly, the youngsters just get in the way.

This film is also available from Amazon in DVD format.