My Left Foot and In The Name of the Father director Sheridan eases off the political polemic to deliver a straightforward and poignant tale of starting over.

Irish emigres Johnny (Considine) and Sarah (Morton) are not merely moving to America to escape an economic dead-end at home.

They're also seeking a new start with their two daughters after their little boy Frankie was killed by a brain tumour.

Arriving in the notorious Hell's Kitchen area of New York (which is now, actually, rather trendy) they find an apartment in the tenement-from-hell.

While the parerents find the neighbourhood of drug addicts and transvestites a little intimidating, the girls Ariel (Emma Bolger) and Christy (Sarah Bolger) regard it as a magical world.

Sheridan himself arrived in New York with his family to work as a stage director and draws on that time of challenges and opportunity to draw a deeply personal picture.

This is a sort of modern take on the American pioneering spirit, except they don't face tribes of ferocious Indians ...but have to drag an air conditioning unit across Manhattan.

Without much cash or a job they struggle to stay afloat and must also fight to emerge from the shadow cast by the grief over their lost boy.

Frankie's death has left Johnny an emotional shell and he's unable to draw on his own feelings to deliver auditions that will land him a role.

Sheridan's America is a rather rose-tinted world of benevolent junkies, cheery drag queens and - almost a contradiction in terms - kindly US immigration officers.

It's more successful as a drama with winning performances from the Bolger sisters, who evoke a childlike wonder at New York it's difficult not to share.

The heart-strings get a pretty severe tug with perhaps the saccharine sweet tastes of the American market more in mind than Britain's in-built resistance to schmaltz.

Tim Evans