War of the Buttons (1994)

• Year: 1994
• Released: 29 Sep 1995
• Country: United Kingdom, France, Japan, United States
• Adwords: 2 nominations
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111666/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/war_of_the_buttons
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: Irish Gaelic, English
• MPA Rating: PG
• Genre: Adventure, Drama, Family
• Runtime: 94 min
• Writer: Louis Pergaud, Colin Welland, Yves Robert
• Director: John Roberts
• Cast: Gregg Fitzgerald, Gerard Kearney, Darragh Naughton
• Keywords: based on novel or book, rivalry, ireland, button, 1960s,

	7.4/10
	92% – Critics
	false% – Audience

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War of the Buttons Movie Reviews

A Treasure Of Childhood

This is a tremendously entertaining film that makes its points about many things: childhood energy, ingenuity, innocence, and nostalgia; class distinction; first love; learning from one’s mistakes; life being precious; parentage; realizing what’s important in life; setting an example as a parent; etc. It’s filmed in the beautiful Irish countryside. Watching it, I wanted to grow up there myself. The youthful actors were comic, fantastic, joyful, touching, and true to childhood. The script was outstanding in allowing the young actors to show us the essence of childhood, rather than just telling us by being talky. The story concerns the rivalry between two sets of boys in neighboring towns and how and why it escalates. A real charmer, it reminds me of Truffaut’s Small Change and the resilience that all children seem to have. The only criticism I have is regarding the transition in the film from the rivalry to the last act. Although it seemed to be a natural enough occurrence, I felt it was a little quick and the film ended a bit abruptly for me. Or just maybe I wanted the magic to continue, if for only a little while longer: the nostalgia of childhood and first realizations. *** of 4 stars.

Something of a classic

This is a very fun and light-hearted film that is impossible not to like. Based on a French novel that has also been adapted a couple of times in France, the story is transported to Ireland and concerns the rivalry between the kids from two villages. Carrickdowse and Ballydowse are separated by a bridge, and in the evenings after school, mobs of boys meet in the fields and fight each other with sticks and rocks and set new and ever-changing border lines. The ‘war’ reaches new levels when a new form of trophy-taking comes into play, whereby the groups capture a member from the opposing village and cut off the buttons from his shirts and rip his clothes. In order to fight this war, the Carrickdowse leader Fergus orders his soldiers to assemble all buttons and threads they can find, so that they aren’t punished by their parents if they are captured and then return home without any clothes. “War of the Buttons” is something of a family-classic in Ireland these days. Watching it all these years later I can appreciate the fine cast of actors that the film was able to gather. This was by no means a low-budget movie, it’s more along the lines of “The Commitments” in terms of the international investment it received than anything else made in Ireland. It was produced by David Puttnam, who had produced a Best Picture Oscar-winner with “Chariots of Fire” in the 80s, and the screenplay was written by Colin Welland, who also won an Oscar for that one. That was quite a considerable pedigree behind it. Amongst the cast there is Liam Cunningham, who was only really starting out on the screen in 1994, and the always solid Colm Meaney. The young cast all did a great job, too, and the cinematography was spot-on in visually reconstructing an Ireland from the 1960s/70s.

Thank God that this wasn’t a Hollywood movie!

Ireland is developing quite an interesting film industry. In “War of the Buttons”, the children from rival towns are always sparring over buttons. They come up with every neat way to get revenge on each other. One of the reasons that this movie was so interesting was because it wasn’t one of these situations where against all odds the ragtag team beats the big guys with all the money; in this case, they were equally matched. Also, we get to see how the Irish are trying to revive their culture: the schools are teaching the native Irish language. The only two cast members whom I recognized were Colm Meaney and Milo O’Shea, but the the whole cast did quite well. An excellent movie.