Maple leaf comedy that lacks punch.
It is refreshing to see that Canadian films have finally found their way into the mega jumbo Cineplex’s and have established a small occupancy in a film market that is dominated by our southern neighbours. Men with Brooms is tattooed and stamped with the Canadian maple leaf and is a production that with the actors, the music and the beer bottles screams-oh Canada! Paul Gross’ directorial debut is not a film about the Y chromosome gender and home maintenance it’s about the sport of curling- think Molson’s “I Am Canadian” ads without the hockey sticks.
Personally, I’ve always been leery of sports-themed films because it dreadfully fails to capture the authenticity and true drama of a real sporting event; maybe it is the way-too-many-crowd reaction shots or the fact that viewer enthusiasm is harder to generate when the final results are exaggeratedly obvious. This film falls into the same category, with a plot smothered in gag humour and stupid human tricks, and don’t leave out the ever-so-popular guys-gets-girl romantic guck and as an added bonus, there is heavy Canadian drama. The latter part of the equation seems misplaced and inappropriate and rubs off in a worst way possible with the ineffective performance from up and coming actress Molly Parker (Kissed) who brings most of her dramatic expertise into a character that simply irritates the viewer with a personal battle over alcoholism.
The rest of the film consists of rocks, broomsticks and foul-mouthed, beer-drinking small town folk of the fictitious town of Long Bay. Leslie Nielsen (Forbidden Planet), who has seen better days as an actor, is the Ben Kenobi with a barnyard training camp who gets the curlers- including Paul Gross (Cold Comfort) as Chris Cutter, ready for their big tournament. The rest of the narrative offers plenty of plumped together minor subplots, which come across as a bunch of annoyances and do very little for character development or for the overall direction of the film. But despite, these annoyances, this was a decent attempt at making a red and white version of Quebec’s own successful drivel film trilogy Les Boys. But in the end, Men with Brooms falls far from becoming a comedy with edge and the humour comes nowhere close to the comedic ingenuity of a Kids in the Hall (perhaps, this is an unfair comparison), so I guess I’ll just stick to the heavy dramatic films of Egoyan or the sci-fi freak shows of Cronenberg. Oh, and what’s with this disturbing new trend of a film being funnier in the end credits than within its entirety?
