Jump to the good stuff: The Review | The Final Verdict
The Review:
Breakfast on Pluto is a drama about a transgender woman searching for her mother in the 1970s.
The movie follows Patricia “Kitty” Braden (Cillian Murphy) in the fictional Irish town of Tyrellin, where her mother abandoned her as a baby on church steps. The church then gave the baby, a physiological boy, to a foster mother to raise.
The film rushes past Kitty’s childhood so quick that all we know is that she and her foster family (a mother and her daughter) do not get along. We also see some of the mischief Kitty gets herself into at school, and the small group of loyal friends she makes.
Much of the movie does not ring true. Since Kitty is an adult in the 1970s, her school years would have been in the 1960s, when anybody different often got bullied. However, the only people who don’t seem to accept her are the school and her foster mother.
After Kitty runs away from home, she quickly gets involved with the lead vocalist for Billy Hatchet and the Mohawks. While Billy (Gavin Friday) is deeply in love with Kitty, the other band members aren’t happy about it. However, they keep it to themselves and only make their complaint known after Kitty joins the group. And even then, we don’t get much insight into it.
Once the Billy story is over, a new one begins with basically the same plotline. Kitty meets someone who takes her in, only to part with them later. This would work if each section gave us some insight into Kitty, but they don’t. And after a while it gets tedious.
Because Breakfast on Pluto takes place in London in the 1970s, there is some political unrest. And although the IRA bombings are a part of the story, they have little impact on Kitty. She’s briefly traumatized when a close friend gets killed in a bombing, but it’s quickly brushed off and forgotten.
One final gripe: how does Kitty remain freshly shaven if she’s living on the street?
The Final Verdict:
Because Breakfast on Pluto lacks depth, it’s a dull film to sit through. Kitty has no motivating force driving her from point A to point B, nor are we given any reason to care. What a bore.
