Hoo, boy. You might call watching this film Canadian Water Torture. This film has been advertised and pushed and promoted as a big-budget Canadian blockbuster film, has been given as much positive press as could ever be wished for, and all of it is completely unmerited. The trailers from the movie (now, this shows my gullibility for trusting trailers) didn't at all represent the movie. It seems as though the scenes they used for the trailers were made for a different movie, but inserted in this one so they wouldn't have to show the public what the movie was really like.
The plot could simply be summarized as unlikeable losers making a mockery of themselves and, from time to time, an otherwise fine sport, curling. There are some funny scenes where curling stones explode when thrown as hard as possible, but this is not much of a comedy, unless the thought of all that expense undertaken by Alliance Atlantis films to make this piece of garbage strikes the viewer as funny. Rather, this is a dark tale about people living very poorly. There is the one couple which has sex everywhere, publicly, just in the vain hope of reproducing. The audience is left hoping they don't succeed. One romantic subplot is the female proprietor of the town grill, who falls in love with the female police officer. This is presented as one of the cheerful byproducts of the unlikeable losers winning the curling tournament.
Paul Gross stars as the unlikeable star of the film. The height of his unlikeableness comes when, trying to drown out his memories of curling failure, he buys a beer stein and the bar TV from the bartender, only to hurl the stein into the TV. I'm sure it only took about 40 takes for him to get it right. He is also presented as being the Canadian love machine of the millennium, having two sisters fall for him and having to earn their love.
This film also marks the further downward spiral of Leslie Neilsen into complete senility and unfunniness. Yet studios keep using his name, more than his abilities, as drawing power. Wearing a beard to cover his now numerous liver spots, he fails to evoke any laughs as Paul Gross's father and the team's coach.
Although the film's central point is presented as curling, it doesn't figure very prominently into the movie. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as Hoosiers presents Gene Hackman's character more prominently than basketball to great effect. This however is not the case here, as none of the characters have any heroic or positive virtues, and therefore should take no prominent position in any storyline, except perhaps as laughingstocks. I trust this is what the filmmakers had in mind, except they ended up more as objects of scorn and hatred than loveable ne'er-do-wells.
The rest of the film, luckily, I don't seem to remember too well. I do remember hating every second of it, and now I am prepared to launch a lawsuit on Alliance Atlantis for slander, having done more to ruin the reputation of our great land than Jean Chretien and Sheila Copps put together.
The plot could simply be summarized as unlikeable losers making a mockery of themselves and, from time to time, an otherwise fine sport, curling. There are some funny scenes where curling stones explode when thrown as hard as possible, but this is not much of a comedy, unless the thought of all that expense undertaken by Alliance Atlantis films to make this piece of garbage strikes the viewer as funny. Rather, this is a dark tale about people living very poorly. There is the one couple which has sex everywhere, publicly, just in the vain hope of reproducing. The audience is left hoping they don't succeed. One romantic subplot is the female proprietor of the town grill, who falls in love with the female police officer. This is presented as one of the cheerful byproducts of the unlikeable losers winning the curling tournament.
Paul Gross stars as the unlikeable star of the film. The height of his unlikeableness comes when, trying to drown out his memories of curling failure, he buys a beer stein and the bar TV from the bartender, only to hurl the stein into the TV. I'm sure it only took about 40 takes for him to get it right. He is also presented as being the Canadian love machine of the millennium, having two sisters fall for him and having to earn their love.
This film also marks the further downward spiral of Leslie Neilsen into complete senility and unfunniness. Yet studios keep using his name, more than his abilities, as drawing power. Wearing a beard to cover his now numerous liver spots, he fails to evoke any laughs as Paul Gross's father and the team's coach.
Although the film's central point is presented as curling, it doesn't figure very prominently into the movie. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as Hoosiers presents Gene Hackman's character more prominently than basketball to great effect. This however is not the case here, as none of the characters have any heroic or positive virtues, and therefore should take no prominent position in any storyline, except perhaps as laughingstocks. I trust this is what the filmmakers had in mind, except they ended up more as objects of scorn and hatred than loveable ne'er-do-wells.
The rest of the film, luckily, I don't seem to remember too well. I do remember hating every second of it, and now I am prepared to launch a lawsuit on Alliance Atlantis for slander, having done more to ruin the reputation of our great land than Jean Chretien and Sheila Copps put together.