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.

When their father Hubert suddenly turns into a rat, his family don't really know how to react, apart from putting him in a cage. When a journalist convinces them to write a book, he moves in and starts to mould their emotions to exploit the situation for fame and fortune.The key to this film is in the imaginative set up and the funny telling rather than the actual plot itself. In terms of plot the film runs out of steam a little towards the end where it seems to realise that plotting hasn't been the main driving force of the film. What does drive the film is that it is laugh out loud funny almost all the way through. If you like the sort of Irish humour and characters then you'll like this a lot. The idea of being turned into a rat isn't really explained but this doesn't really matter.The characters are all excellent, although Postlethwaite is really little more than cameo for most of the film, his part being played rather well by various white rats! Staunton is the strongest character and has captured the hard love of an Irish mother very well – focused on the practicals despite circumstances (a priest is called to the rat and she throws it in the washing machine so his dirty fur won't shame the family, `it's ok, he's on wool' she assures a concerned family member). Her character is hilarious throughout. Kelly (Father Jack) is strong in a small role, but Wilmot's character is less clear but seems to be the one that the plot is riding on. The kids' roles are pretty funny and the support cast of Irish stereotypes all do what they are expected to do.When I watched this movie on TV I had never heard of it and I wonder how many people have actually seen it, it's a shame because this is really funny and worth seeing despite the fact that the actual plot itself is not as strong as the laughs deserve. Overall this is very funny throughout if you like the Father Ted style of slightly exaggerated Irish humour.

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.