Preview
GOING THE DISTANCE
Starring Christopher Jacot, Joanne Kelly and Ryan Belleville
Directed by Mark Griffiths
Opens Friday, August 21
In the latest Canadian effort to push through film stereotypes and embrace its smoothly polished American counterparts, Going the Distance brings the teen film to a Canadian audience with a vaguely Canadian style. While it is, literally speaking, a Canadian film – it was made in Canada, starring Canadians and set in front of a Canadian landscape – under the surface, there might not be much else to separate it from the films with the same plot we’ve already seen from outside our own borders.
After his girlfriend, Trish (Katheryn Winnick), heads from their West Coast beach town to Toronto to work at the MuchMusic Video Awards, Nick (Christopher Jacot) embarks on a cross-Canada road trip in a Winnebago to propose marriage before Trish can be corrupted by sleazy music producer Lenny Swackhammer (Jason Priestley). Joining his trip and contributing to a string of often ridiculous misadventures, are his stoner sidekick Dime (Ryan Belleville), his crude friend Tyler (Shawn Roberts) and two hitchhikers.
While many of the concepts and gags in the film might seem familiar -– from Nick’s pot-smoking hippie parents to that joke about the hitchhikers and the farmer’s daughter – Belleville explains that the Canadian landscape that carries the plot, gives the movie something new.
"It takes place in a Canadian backdrop and this movie could never be done anywhere else because the background is very distinctly Canadian," says the Calgary native and Loose Moose alumnus, adding that whether a film is Canadian should have little to do with style or genre. "It’s a film and it’s Canadian, and in my opinion that’s the only prerequisite we should have for Canadian film."
As illusive as the term "Canadian" is in describing just about anything, movie buffs and Canadian Heritage staff alike have long struggled with a definition of Canadian film. Most often, this genre (if you can call it that) resembles art-house films – small, esoteric productions with plenty of artistic merit, but little-to-no mainstream commercial value. Topping such a list are films such as Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica, and Don McKellar’s Last Night.
In recent years, however, we’ve seen Canadian production companies trying to break this mould, creating familiar stories like that of Going the Distance inside tried-and-true Hollywood genres – with mixed success. Last year’s Toronto heist flick Foolproof boasted one of the largest marketing campaigns in Canadian movie history, complete with a nationwide sweepstakes and a fast-food restaurant tie-in. Foolproof underperformed at the box office and some critics complained that the movie, which received federal funding, didn’t paint a distinctly Canadian picture.
Belleville rejects this sort of criticism. According to him, this attitude only hurts what’s created.
"Sometimes we sabotage ourselves talking about what we should do and what we shouldn’t do," Belleville says. "I’ve heard of writers who will write a movie that takes place in Toronto and it’s about Canadians, and they’ll get rejected for funding because it’s not Canadian enough. That’s because the person reading it wants to see a beaver sitting on a pile of maple syrup. I think it’s great to see a mainstream, fun film."
Going the Distance was certainly born out of the mainstream. Most of the elements of modern teen road-trip movies are there – the archetypal characters, the complicated love triangles, the coming-of-age growth that could only result from a conflict-filled trip across the nation and an abundance of crass sexual humour (anal sex and fellatio jokes abound throughout and in one scene, Jason Priestley pulls a used condom, not his, from his mouth).
Whether it’s a result of it being Canadian or not, Belleville insists Going the Distance can still eke out a distinctive name for itself.
"Everyone has been a teenager. This is the reason why everyone likes these formats and it is a very popular format but this is still sort of unique. I saw Road Trip, an American movie, and American Pie, and I still think these are quite different with different sensibilities."
Even though there are differences, many of the sensibilities that come out in the film will still be quite familiar, notably the gags. Canadian humour has a reputation for self-deprecating irony, delivered with more subtlety than the toilet humour that finds its way into the mainstream.
Belleville balks at this assessment of Canadian humour, or at the suggestion that Going the Distance is out of keeping with what home audiences will identify with.
"It isn’t subtle like Tom Green," he says facetiously. "What I’m saying is that I think we’re like everyone else. Canadians like good pee-pee poo-poo ka-ka jokes. Being intellectual and being the baseness that binds all humanity aren’t mutually exclusive, they can actually come together." |
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