As if in response to all those British movies that present Irish people as being melancholy, dreamy alcoholics who sit around singing forlornly and then getting into fights - those of us who aren't terrorists, that is - here's an Irish movie set in Britain that's willing to perpetuate a few stereotypes of it's own.
Set among the slacker milieu of Kentish Town, it concerns a student who's growing old and wondering what he's going to do with his life - Stop me if you've heard this before - and is living with an unemployed guy who challenges him to see who can conquer the most young women - the "peaches" of the title. What's striking about the film is the narrow range of it's characters interests, which seem to extend only to pursuing women, clothes, drinking and avoiding work; like copies of Loaded magazine that had grown legs and started to walk. The one well-developed female character, in contrast, wants a more serious relationship (Bet you didn't see that one coming). If she was in an American movie she'd be telling us what a difficult place she's in right now, but she's too British and reserved for that.
The film has it's redeeming features, it's got moments of humour and uses it's locations well, even if some of them don't seem like that sort of locations unemployed people would live in. I'd like to see it get a wide release in the UK in the hope that less stereotypical Irish characters would populate their movies in future, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
