Viagra – the perfect subject for a film. Well, kind of. Yes, there is a new movie out this week, Holy Water, which concerns the shenanigans of a group of Irish men who rather unbelievably steal a massive shipload of Viagra. Which somehow gets into the town’s water system.
The town then becomes a den of wild rumpy-pumpy and sexy times, with stereotyped Irish bodies being overcome by unfamiliar lustfulness.
The drug company Pfizer, who manufactures the drug, are also given a major role as they seek to recapture the multi-million pound shipment the hilarious Irish inadvertently capture. If the Irish characters are ridiculously clichéd, then the mind boggles at what Pfizer employees will make of Linda Hamilton – of Terminator fame – playing the Pfizer person tasked with getting the blue pills back.
Pfizer have been allowed to put disclaimers in at the start and end of the film, probably a well-judged move as the plot centres around the theory that if you dump truckloads of Viagra into a well then the medication will still work as it gets into the water system of the local town (it won’t – don’t try this one at home to spice up the local gossip.) However it appears that they are not entirely displeased by the free publicity the film will generate for them.
Unfortunately the movie has been enthusiastically and energetically panned by film critics, garnering an average of 1 star in most newspapers. The Times described it as ‘staggeringly unfunny and skin-crawlingly unsexy’ while the Guardian said it has ‘flagging comic potency’ (full marks for the double-entendres there).