Anyone who has been through the nerves, nightmares and noise of preparing to get hitched knows that there are pitfalls aplenty for the unwary bride or groom. While many pre-wedding pics focus on the female side of things, The Stag aims to balance matters out with a peek at one man’s hellish baptism by freezing cold camping trip.
Self-confessed metrosexual Fionan (Hugh O’Conor) doesn’t want a stag do, but would happily attend the hen do instead. His concerned bride-to-be Ruth (Amy Huberman) persuades the marginally more macho best man Davin (Andrew Scott) to organise one.
Reluctantly he agrees, while doing everything he can to stop Ruth’s infamously alpha male brother, known only as “The Machine” (Peter McDonald), gate-crashing their sober, outdoorsy excuse for a stag bash. Not so easily foxed, “The Machine” tracks them down, sparking to life a wild few days in rural Ireland where the Stags find themselves lost, shot at, stoned and butt-naked. So, just your average stag party, then.
There are warning signs of obvious comedy moments here (easy gags about nudity etc.) but also some genuinely chucklesome moments. Still, we can’t watch something in which Andrew “Moriarty” Scott organises something without suspecting it’s all part of a fiendish master plan to outwit Sherlock Holmes. The Stag is out in Ireland on March 7 before landing in the UK on March 14.