If we’re only concerning ourselves with the world of the film with its nostalgic black and white photography with the cute story of a Belfast boy navigating through the complex world of family, school, and the street, the film is quite decent, maybe worth 3 ½ stars or something to that liking.

But alas this film takes place in the real world which as the coloured pro- and epilogue, in typical tourism style, indicates. The background to this shiny eyed boyhood that is the opening stages of the opening stages of the troubles, the, albeit low intensity, civil war, that ravaged Northern Ireland almost three decades and that to this day still divides the society across ethno-religious lines. To portray this as some simple story where good-natured people are able to disregard this disgusting reality is so perverse that it can hardly be fathomed.

Of course, the film caters to a liberal upper middle-class audience that can identify themselves with this good-natured father who, through is exceptional ability to abstract himself from the reality, can overcome petty sectarian divides. But that’s not how real people work and how ethnic conflict develops. It’s a great disservice, I would even go as far as to say an insult, to the people that have lived and still live with the scars and suffering this, and many similar situations, creates. To think that we by the good will of our hearts can overcome divides such as these make it easy for the prospected middle-class liberal to see themselves as beyond the ignorance of ordinary people. That the solution to our social problems could be overcome if people were just a bit more enlightened.

The only thing that remains with me after watching this film is a deep sense of disgust and a hope that the audience will not be so easily fooled and instead able to see how this narrative might be one of the greatest hindrances to overcoming divide and so-called polarisation.