Pete's Meteor

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{{Infobox film

|name = Pete's Meteor

|image = Petesmeteorvhs.jpg

|caption = DVD cover

|producer = John S. Lyons
Liam O'Neill

|director = Joe O'Byrne

|writer = Joe O'Byrne

|starring = Brenda Fricker
Alfred Molina
Mike Myers

|music = Richard Hartley

|cinematography = Paul Sarossy

|editing = Marie-Thérèse Boiché

|distributor = KC Medien

|released = {{Film date|1998}}

|runtime = 104 minutes

|country = Ireland

|language = English

}}

Pete's Meteor is an Irish 1998 drama film. It was written and directed by Joe O'Byrne and stars Mike Myers.

Mike Myers plays a drug dealer living in the slums of Dublin. He tries to financially provide for the three children of his dead brother. The children's lives are forever changed when a meteor crashes into their backyard. Alfred Molina plays a wealthy scientist that the children must confront to retrieve their heaven-sent gift.

Production and Release

The Irish Film Board gave the filmmakers almost IR£300,000 for the production.{{cite news| location=Dublin | work=Evening Herald | first=John| last=Lawrence | title=Millions wasted on flick flops| date=12 February 2001}}

It won the Crystal Bear Special Mention award for Best Feature Film at the 1999 Berlin International Film Festival. Despite this, the film failed to find a distributor, and was released direct-to-video in the United States in December 2002.

In a 2002 profile of Myers in The Independent, the film was said to have "proved meteoric in the way it vanished from view".{{Cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/mike-myers-why-does-everyone-want-to-get-into-bed-with-him-184062.html|title=Mike Myers: Why does everyone want to get into bed with him?|website=www.independent.co.uk|access-date=21 March 2024|archive-date=22 December 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151222092321/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/mike-myers-why-does-everyone-want-to-get-into-bed-with-him-184062.html|url-status=live}}

Reception

Christopher Null of Contactmusic.com awarded the film two stars out of five and wrote, “The story doesn't help matters, and sheer insanity is not much of a substitute for actual character development.”{{cite web|last=Null|first=Christopher|title=Pete's Meteor|website=Contactmusic.com|url=https://www.contactmusic.com/film/review/petesmeteor|accessdate=June 10, 2022}}

Nathan Rabin of The Dissolve gave the film a negative review and wrote, “It doesn’t help that the child actors deliver performances so terrible, they may actually persuade audiences to root against a trio of hard-luck orphans.” Rabin also added, “I recommend Pete’s Meteor to bad-movie aficionados.”{{Cite web|url=https://thedissolve.com/news/3290-you-might-also-like-mike-myers-shows-his-maudlin-s/|title=You Might Also Like: Mike Myers shows his maudlin side in Pete’s Meteor|website=thedissolve.com|access-date=21 March 2024|archive-date=20 September 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140920235316/https://thedissolve.com/news/3290-you-might-also-like-mike-myers-shows-his-maudlin-s/|url-status=live}}

References

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