Reviews

Eugene Levy and John Hemphill, "SCTV" and "Maniac Mansion" veterans, take those shows' unique, droll humour and superimpose it on a classic Western storyline, and the result is spectacular. Hemphill and George Buza are hilarious as part of a hyper-Tarantinesque group of nefarious armchair proto-pop-philosophers trying to force several families off their land. Fred Willard is at his best as the dim-witted homesteader who stands in their way, gleefully unaware that his hired hand (Kris Kristofferson) is being openly pursued by his lascivious wife (very memorably played by Wendel Meldrum).

This type of humour works brilliantly in TV series, but experiences mild growing pains being transferred to feature length -- this movie does drag in spots. But it's still hilarious thanks to the great writing and performances, and is definitely recommended to all fans of this sort of drollery, and to anyone looking for a radically, refreshingly different take on the Wild West.

A woman, her sister and her daughter, on their way from Brooklyn to Connecticut, accidentally turn off the highway in the South Bronx (actually Toronto with fake graffiti on the walls) and what ensues is a veritable "bonfire of the vanities," to coin a phrase. Their car is surrounded at an abandoned gas station by a thoroughly racially-integrated gang (as all street gangs are in such movies) which is intent on pumping much more than gas. They escape on foot, and spend the rest of the movie being chased through, over and under the mean streets of the big city...

This is fairly standard for its genre, if a little bloody -- the three unarmed women manage to kill a surprising number of the heavily-armed bad guys, obviously an early manifestation of girl power. Stephanie Powers and Kathleen Robertson are quite good as the mother and daughter, as is Chaz Lamar Shepherd as the youngest gang member. The suspense is also well-done, even though it's hard to be legitimately scared by the Southern Ontario faux-Bronx setting. Recommended, if only for Robertson's unforgettable final line to Powers, absolutely dripping with the quasi-ironic, self-aware zeitgeist of the early 90's: "Next time you drive, OK?"

When this show started it was meant to fill a specific void - unlike other countries, Canada didn't have a prime-time "national" soap opera (at least not since the Meech Lake era). Rather than make an American-type soap with rich and glamorous characters, or a British-type soap with colourful working-class ones, executive producers Linda Schulyer (of "Degrassi" fame) and Stephen Stohn decided to set this in a middle-class suburb of Toronto. Amazingly, it's less interesting than it sounds.

The producers assembled a large cast of B- through Z- list Canadian actors, with an extremely wide range of talent. Some, like Jayne Eastwood (Gloria) are actually legitimate actors, and are very good. Others are bad, even by Canadian television standards, which is saying something. Stewart Arnott's (Charles) performance is particularly appalling, and he's probably the central character. The series starts with a questionable police shooting, looking at its direct and indirect effects on the people in the neighbourhood, and rapidly deteriorates from there. None of the characters are extremely likeable, and some of the storylines, like the MacKenzie - Wilkes family feud, are simply too silly. Still, the series is definitely addictive (the whole point of soap operas) and there are some genuinely funny moments (let's be charitable and call them intentional).

At the beginning of the second season a couple of new characters were added (with Ben getting a miraculous face-and-body-lift), and it seemed as though the mood music suddenly got a lot louder and more intrusive, which only served to make the bad performances seem even worse. I should probably come clean and admit that I didn't watch more than a few episodes after that point so I don't know how the series was by the end of its run.

If you're able to get over the initial shock of seeing Eugene Levy, John Hemphill, Linda Kash and other SCTV / Second City alumni in a "serious" romantic comedy you may actually enjoy this. Levy and Kash are divorced but still working together and getting along just fine until they learn that their divorce was never official due to a technicality. The seemingly trivial task of sorting this out leads them to re-examine their lives and relationship, with the help (or not) of their aggressive lawyers.

Despite the lingering feeling that this is the kind of movie these people are supposed to be making fun of, not making, this is not nearly as obnoxious as most movies about self-absorbed yuppies publicly working through their personal problems in the early '90s are. Levy and Kash, both wonderful comic actors, work well together and turn potentially unpleasant characters into warm, laid-back people you actually care about. Hemphill is also very funny as Levy's over-the-top lawyer. These actors manage to infuse a dose of levity into a wooden script basically devoid of jokes.

A nice, inoffensive TV movie, but the potentially hilarious and endearing performances are wasted on the script. Not recommended unless you're a real fan of the actors.

This low-budget Quebec cult classic is actually an amalgamation of 3 half-hour shorts made in 1981, '83 and '85. It's about the life of Bob (Elvis) Gratton, who's sort of the Babbitt of Brossard: a crass, far-right-wing small-business owner who lives in an unimaginably ugly house in an even uglier Montreal suburb and puts meaning into his life by impersonating Elvis on a local TV show (even though his command of English is tenuous at best). He's in love with all aspects of American culture and is unambiguously federalist - in fact, the film was director Pierre Falardeau's reaction to the Quebec referendum of 1980. The film is meant to give a very negative picture of francophone federalists, but also to show that there's a little bit of Elvis Gratton in everyone (that's the very subtle message of the final scene in the first short).

In many ways this is a very bad movie: subzero production values, embarrassingly puerile slapstick scenes which drag on far too long, etc. But that's all part of its charm, and it's not hard to see how it became a cult classic. Parts of it are very funny, the language is extremely colourful (although those not familiar with Quebec French may need to use subtitles) and it perfectly captures the essence of the kind of petty-bourgeois dullards who are prevalent not just on Montreal's South Shore, but throughout the world, and to a certain extent in all of us. Julien Poulin is wonderful in the title role, but Pierre Falardeau himself is not very good in his cameos, particularly as the American televangelist (his English isn't very good). Definitely recommended. And skip the sequel at all costs.