This film seems to have been made in the belief that someone somewhere exists who needs to be informed that the Irish are, by and large, a congenial and pious people who may love their drink but are little the worse for that. Based on events that took place in Dublin in the 1950s, Evelyn describes the efforts of Desmond Doyle (Pierce Brosnan), a poor tradesman whose wife leaves him one St. Stephen’s Day, to retrieve his three young children from the custody of the Church. His quest through the courts becomes a cause célèbre, and, not to give anything away, he wins in time for the following Christmas.

For a while the unrelieved conventionality of the film’s every aspect can be felt as blandly comforting, and there are many, many pub scenes, which Bruce Beresford (as complete a hack as any director who ever lived) milks for each ounce of quaintness. But the most confirmed sentimentalist must lose heart at the outpouring of treacle in the movie’s last third, when Desmond is inspired to argue theology on the witness stand (a folk tune welling up on the soundtrack), his little daughter faces down her persecutors with the help of her guardian angel, and so on till they unwrap the presents. (94 minutes)