DUDE! REMEMBER HOW AWESOME 2003 WAS?

Movie Review Escape to Canada ? Directed by Albert Neremberg ?
Cinematheque ? PG ? 2 1/2 stars out of five

ACCORDING to this new documentary, Canadians are all tolerant,
peaceful, progressive and intelligent. Oh, and just a wee bit smug.

In 2003, Canadian director Albert Neremberg brought us the
factoid-filled Stupidity, which positioned itself as an attack on the
dumbing-down of public life but then missed its own point by being
shallow, scattershot and not that smart.

Neremberg's latest, a comparison of recent social policies in the
United States and Canada, also lacks follow-through.

The film starts with footage of foreigners and home-grown Canadians
declaring that our country is stodgy and dull. As neo-con dweeb Tucker
Carlson suggests, "Without the U.S., Canada is essentially Honduras,
except colder and much less interesting."

Neremberg rallies by positioning 2003 as our very own Canuck Summer of
Love, arguing that the loosening of marijuana laws and the
legalization of gay marriage suddenly made Canada a very cool, very
hip, very happening place to be -- not for Tucker Carlson, mind you,
but for reefer refugees, same-sex brides and grooms, and later, Iraq
war defectors and conscientious objectors. Much is made of the idea
that America is always called "the home of the free," but Canada is
the place to go if you actually want to be free. Neremberg makes some
fair points, but the film soon turns into a narrow,
self-congratulatory love-in. Escape to Canada might have worked as a
breezy short doc, or better yet a cute spot on This Hour Has 22
Minutes. As a feature-length film it feels strained, and repeated
footage of Niagara Falls, majestic forests and snowy mountain tops
doesn't help.

Neremberg is in some ways a Canuck counterpart to Michael Moore, who
occasionally uses a happy-happy rainbow-coloured version of Canada as
a foil for Bush's America. In Bowling for Columbine, Moore muddled our
gun-control facts, and then implied that Canadians spend all their
time scorning racial prejudice, watching incisive news analysis, and
keeping their doors unlocked.

Well, it would be pretty to think so, but I don't think we can go
quite that far. Neremberg tends to cherry-pick his examples, making it
seem like the rabid Bill O'Reilly speaks for all Americans, and that
the way-laidback owner of a bring-your-own-bud marijuana cafe speaks
for all Canadians.

Neremberg shows the joyous wedding of "The Michaels," two Toronto men
who have been together so long they've actually started to look like
each other. Then he shows footage of bible-thumping Americans
declaring that if you let a man marry a man, then you'll have to let a
man marry a cow. (Why is it that the gay marriage question instantly
devolves into the "man marrying his cow/goat/horse" example?)

But plenty of people fall into the farmyard-animal fallacy here in
Canada, as a brief look at the letters page of any newspaper will tell
you.

Escape to Canada is happy and fun and full of adorable footage of pot
activists smoking spliffs as big as a baby's arm. (Evidently,
Neremberg encourages audiences to watch the film in something he calls
"Stonervision.")

But here's the buzzkill: Escape to Canada will make viewers feel
complacent, not challenged. And if you feel strongly about progressive
political and social movements, this is no time to be complacent, as
current drug-law confusion and Stephen Harper's proposed threats to
same-sex marriage make clear.

The Summer of Love is over, man. Neremberg admits this in a tacked-on
conclusion, but the film still feels out of joint.