Love in Kilnerry

Randy New Englanders experience a series of comic misadventures when the local plant emits a chemical that increases everyone's sex drive.

“Love in Kilnerry” is what you’d call an obvious movie. It has a ridiculous premise that defies any kind of logic and just demands that you go with it. It has a motley cast of characters largely consisting of “types,” roles that could be swapped into or out of any number of other films.

The jokes have all big wind-ups, land exactly where you’d expect, and the handful of dramatic scenes play about the same.

And yet, there’s an innate sweetness to the movie, written, directed and starring David Keith. He plays the sheriff of a small fishing town named Kilnerry (actually Portsmouth, N.H.) consisting largely of Irish-American senior citizens. It’s the sort of place where kids leave as soon as they can, and the remaining adults below Social Security age question why they didn’t do the same. The only newspaper, the Kilnerry Gazette, recently closed down.

Things are so slow and quiet that the town hall meeting only happens quarterly, and the only local government functionary beyond the sheriff is the mayor, Jerry Boylan (Tony Triano). At the latest meeting he introduces Rakesh (Debargo Sanyal), a geeky young scientist from the Environmental Protection Agency, who informs the people they’re going to be rolling out a new process to reduce pollution at the local chemical plant using a new substance, P172.

Only downside: P172 has been shown to dramatically increase the sex drive of test animals — so the folks of Kilnerry can expect to experience similar side effects.

Now, let’s stop right there. The idea that the EPA wouldn’t shut down such an experiment the minute people begin going on mad sex escapades is completely ludicrous. But just swallow your disbelief, and let’s move on.

The people, especially the older set, immediately start pairing off for frenetic bouts of fornication (you can tell their age because they refer to sex as fornication). Jerry the mayor, a cheerily rotund fellow with a voice so high he could sing with the Chipmunks without being sped up, is soon romancing Brigid (Sheila Stasack), the town gossip and owner of the general store.

Sheriff Gary O'Reilly (Keith) is forced to arrest people doing the deed in public as well as the town priest, Father O’Dell (James Patrick Nelson), who decides that God wants him to shirk off Adam and Eve’s original sin and become a nudist. I should mention that the priest and the mayor have some terrible rivalry that frequently causes them to come to blows.

Gary’s own father, Fergal (Roger Hendricks Simon), the town mailman who loudly complains about not getting a erection for 20 years, begins dancing with Aednat (Synbil Lines), a reclusive widow who’s terrified the P172 is going to send hordes of rapists to her door.

Gary himself has an obvious potential partner in Nessa (Kathy Searle), the wonderfully kooky owner of the paper store, who’s been pining after him for some time. But instead, the sheriff becomes so vexed about all the sudden lovemaking going on all around him he becomes convinced it’s going to ruin what made Kilnerry so special.

The humor tends to be very broad, such as when a bunch of the oldsters decide to start their own local dating website, which leads to some masked swinger parties. I got a good laugh out of old Fergal — love that name — playing around with Grindr and wondering why there aren’t very many women on their own, only guys who ask for picture of his junk. So he sends them photos of the stuff in his garage.

Much of the cast is pro-ams, local theater types and the like, but they invest in their roles without apology. I particularly enjoyed Boylan as the screechy mayor and Ward as Nessa, giving her lots of emotional colors not found on the page of the script.

“Love in Kilnerry,” which is currently available to rent on Google Play, isn’t winning any awards for originality. It’s an unprepossessing low-budget comedy that feels more like a TV sitcom than a feature film. But I found myself enjoying spending time with these randy New Englanders.