Reviewing Movies

What could be more quintessentially Canadian then a bunch of guys renting a bus and driving across country. Why not have them film Joshua Jackson doing the same on a motorcycle. Did I mention that he's making the trip in reaction to hearing a diagnosis of terminal cancer? In true Canadian spirit this is movie-making on a shoe-string, the crew fill in for characters Joshua meets along the way and iconic musicians whose music provides the playlist for the journey pop up as well Gord Downie on a chopper and Joel Plaskett as a street busker. Joshua Jackson gets an Executive Production credit which would indicate that he put up some of his own money to see the movie completed.

This is a Canadian Road movie with the British-made Norton bike provided by one of the crew. Jackson does the stereotypical photos of himself with tourist attractions in the background. I've actually seen most of the 'world's largest' attractions he posed in front of but I wasn't moved to photograph them. Jackson shows few signs of the illness which provides the pretext for his journey but the camera does make the 30-year-old actor look somewhat bloated. There is a poignant moment when he stands in front of the rusting statue of Terry Fox near Thunder Bay. Somehow that dour, quizzical look seems to be his natural fall-back expression, under the circumstances he's not required to smile or appear to take particular enjoyment in his journey.

I'm not sold on the concept of Campbell Scott's background narration which begins the movie and runs throughout. Not being a Hollywood opus with a budget in the millions the production values are what one would expect. The exterior shots of the Canadian panorama are impressive but the lighting of night shots and interiors suffers. The cuts to the long-suffering girl friend back home tend to interrupt the movie's flow. Liane Balaban comes off somewhat bitchy and self-centred. It may be that this movie attempts to do too much at once and gets side-tracked from its true purpose. Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's Long Way Round is in my library and I suppose I need to see if I like the way they treated a motorcycle road trip better. With the odometer on my RV clicking toward the 37,000 kilometre mark I can truly identify with a desire to engage in an odyssey or visionquest. Aside from a final cut to a bookstore window display of Ben's published second novel One Week we are given no indication of the outcome of the underlying story.