It's been nearly ten years since the first mischievous pairing of author Patrick McCabe and director Neil Jordan. The Butcher Boy represented a watershed in the celluloid depiction of an Irish upbringing. Whereas the staple previously encapsulated rolling green hills, kindly townsfolk, and a benign sense of home, McCabe & Jordan's version was the antithesis of this, where small-town parochial-ness, conformity, alcoholism, and poverty created an evil bastard of a spoiled brat child, who left murder, mayhem and insanity in his wake. It represented a film that cut a little too close to the bone, highlighting the real sense of what it meant to be a product of a mid 1950s small rural town, that had been implicit for all who lived through it (and beyond) yet papered over by the official image of a green and verdant utopia by successive governments and tourist boards. Resting on laurels being anathema to such types, the pair are at it again with Breakfast On Pluto, again a story ripping the beautified veil from Irish life, but this time with a greater reach, feel, and sweep than their previous incarnation, telling the tale of the formative years of a one Patrick Braden (Murphy) and his/her ultimate transformation into the androgynous transvestite Kitten.

The movie starts as it means to go on as we first meet the infant Patrick in a scenario that echoes through the ages, an unwanted child left on the doorstep of the local parish priest. Such a clichéd beginning is underscored though by the fact that we are being told all this in subtitles by two robin red-breasts who happened to witness the whole thing! Once again we must adjust our eyes and prepare for a story that plays with us, swapping realism with surrealism and allowing the magic that's inherent in Kitten's life to be infused into ours.

Thusly we follow Patrick as he begins his long search for the mother who abandoned him, taking him from his hostile foster home and gossiping, prying, small town blues to the bright lights, dubious moralities and inequities of a London teeming with unheard of freedoms and endless possibilities, where the now burgeoning Kitten has been reliably informed his disgraced mother Eily Bergin now lives. As Kitten falls in with assorted friends and foes, his misadventures dip in and out of the sweeping cultural change and revolutions of the 70s; sex, drugs, politics, music, civil rights, religion, TV, terrorism; all have their part to play in the formation of the restless, curious and lipstick-laden life of Kitten Barden. Will she find her mother in a city that can swallow you up without a trace never to be seen again?

Bustling with life, energy, exuberance and flair Breakfast On Pluto is truly a tangible and technical marvel to behold. A rich, evocative tapestry and synergy of costume, production design, cinematography and soundtrack more than succeed in re-creating the madness and sheer experimentation of the 1970s in London and Ireland , enabling the viewer to be caught up in the dizzying rush of experience and sensation that Kitten him/herself undergoes.

A very observational Irish sense of humour pervades through the film, giving some lovely judged and measured performances; Gavin Friday as the gay glam rock terrorist who wants to be loved, Brendan Gleeson, consistently excellent as always as the drunk workhorse Irishman abroad, Stephen Rea as the pathetic, lonely magician who exploits, yet is enthralled by Kitten, and even a nicely menacing cameo by Bryan Ferry. However it is Liam Neeson as Father Liam who is the real heart of the film, even more so than Cillian Murphy. An exceptional actor, his serenity and presence give the film genuine heart, dignity and gravitas (the scenes he is in stand out by a mile), his eyes captivate, dragging you into the emotional core of every character he plays.

It is a pity then to reveal I didn't really care for the film. It's cartoonish quality made it reminiscent of The Butcher Boy, but whereas that film was tight, focused and structured, Pluto seems very, very loose, muddled, as if it's trying to fit too much of that sprawling decade in, and it stumbles on its excessiveness. As a result it's thin on the ground, too slight for anything profound to really affect you. The inter-title chapters that came from the book, were obtrusive and distracting when committed to celluloid, taking you out of the film and making it drag out, like reading a book and gauging your progress in how many chapters you have left only to discover you've 40 to go!

Cillian Murphy is superb as Kitten, truly a tour de force performance, carrying the role with dignity, humility and originality however the character to me had no emotional core. As situations around him got harsher and harsher, his character never developed, making him a passive hero in that he never changed, it was the world that changed around him. Perhaps I'm inured to a certain type of three act structure storytelling where the character develops, and changes, whether for good or bad, and that is exactly what Jordan and McCabe had in mind in making Pluto a daring anti-narrative film which has the strength to change our perceptions in its call to accept and confirm strong, unique individuals without feeling the need to change them so they can fit in with what society sees as normal or right. However with no emotional rock to centre our feelings I was a bit detached, never fully feeling for or believing in Kitten, and therefore not really caring what happened to him.

Kudos to Jordan though for his deftly handled political backdrop, not the usual, weighted, moral, long winded tone we've come to expect from films about the Troubles.

Breakfast on Pluto then is a bit mad for madness sake, like the era that spawned it, too loud, too brash, everything vying for equal attention, too much going on, too noisy, dividing our time, distracting us from the real emotion of the story, which we never really sense behind the main protagonist. We can only watch and stare in awe at the presence of Kitten, like so many of the characters in the film, desperately wanting to know more about him, and understand him, but in the end be left alone none the wiser.