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This weekend I pulled a double-header at the cinema. It's a strange feeling: standing up as the house lights come up, stretching your legs and slowly ambling out of the theatre, only to cross the plush hallscape and find your seat for the next movie. You feel like a lazy fucker actually, but in my case it was necessary for academic purposes. I won't go into details, mostly because I am a lazy fucker but also because I visited the Hot Box Cafe first.

Trailer Park Boys was a lot more slick than I expected. In fact, the slickness sorta took away from the charm of the older show, where the camera work was shitty and Ricky was forever telling the boom mic operator to "fuck off or help out," with robberies and the like. It seemed like the movie was trying to sell itself on the characters alone, which is a decent sell but not altogether satisfying. A lot of plot was a hasty-mart recap of the various relationships in the show, a concession which was clearly made to new viewers (read: Americans). There were also some new characters: a stripper girlfriend for Julian and what appeared to be a new actress for Ricky's daughter Trinity. They felt like ticky-tac add-ons at times.

However, I loved the throws to Canadian culture: one scene in a movie theatre has posters for FUBAR (yay!) and Foolproof (bleugh!) in the background, and Ricky is continually trying to get back to jail so he can play in a hockey tournament. And the closing credits, scored by the Tragically Hip, force you to leave with a smile on your face, knowing that all is right in Sunnyvale Trailer Park even under new management.

Employee of the Month is about as awful as one might expect. Jessica Simpson's character has some inspirational speech about how she's not like other girls, and how everyone seems the same, blah blah blah, and this was probably the most entertaining (and ironic) part of the movie. Jessica Simpson is a tool, but you probably don't need to be told that. Employee of the Month has some interesting looks at big-box store culture (like the guys who make a rest lounge for themselves up in the rafters, surrounded by boxes and boxes of VCRs), but the story devolves into romantic misunderstandings and painfully obvious self-realizations. I found that digging in the dirty popcorn and sticky residue under our seats for another joint was the most engaging part of the whole experience.

My ass hurt from the theatre seats and my fingernails were dirty, dirty as hell.

[Trailer Park Boys: the Movie] Employee of the Month

Posted by Chris at 12:53 PM >> Commentations (3)