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Reviews
License to Wed (2007)
Yet Another Bizarrely Unfunny Hollwyood Romcom
Mild spoilers ahead.
As other reviewers have said, the Reverend Frank character hangs like a dark shadow over a film that contains stock, unfunny characters one suspects are in the film just to collect a paycheck. I've always found American romcoms to be psychologically unrealistic, if not utterly fantastic, at least as compared to British, Canadian and Australian ones.
For one thing, everyone in them seems to have oodles of leisure time and piles of money and live in fantastic lofts in New York, LA or Chicago. Second, most of the secondary characters seem to spend their entire lives counseling or amusing the central couple, who show no real interest in their lives in return. They are massively self-involved. Third, there are moments that make no sense, as when Mandy Moore's character doesn't bat an eyelash when she hears that the good Reverend has been bugging her and John Krasinski's apartment, which would surely infuriate any sensible person.
And lastly, there is a painfully unfunny scene where Robin Williams emotionally blackmails Mandy Moore to drive a car blindfolded under Krasinski's guidance as a sort of therapy, almost killing several people (not to mention breaking traffic laws). This wasn't funny slapstick, but mean-spirited, sociopathic narcissism.
To be fair, the robot babies were funny, and the camera was usually in focus. And the viewer could play "spot actors from The Office" in background roles. But if you set your romantic comedy in the "real" world, make sure your characters have real emotions. The only real feeling seen came when Krasinski slugs Williams during a wedding rehearsal. Sadly, no one cheered.
Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story (2006)
A Very Good Film about a Great Canadian
"Prairie Giant" is a very good film about the great Canadian social democrat Tommy Douglas, the creator of the first Medicare system in North America, along with the first provincial government leader to sign into law a bill of rights and to legally guarantee collective bargaining in all sectors of the economy. Douglas was a witty and clever speaker, and Theriault does a good job at conveying his oratorical skills. The usual minuscule CBC budgets aren't noticeable here. A few of the minor actors don't seem terribly well cast: Paul Gross as Diefenbaker, Andy Jones as Mackenzie King, though they give it the old college try. Yet Don McKellar is good as Saskatchewan's finance minister, as is Kristin Booth as Irma Douglas, Tommy's wife. Douglas' final speech to the 50th Anniversary meeting of the CCF about the greed of private enterprise still rings true today in our globalized, McDonaldized, corporatized world.
It would have been nice to see the political struggles of the late 1960s and 1970s, which were skipped over the film, but these were sacrificed to show the struggle over Medicare in detail. You might have thought this would be a somewhat dull three hours... yet it could easily have filled five hours and kept my attention. We need more films like this from the CBC.