ESCAPE TO CANADA

Featuring Jean Chretien, Bill Maher, and Marc Emery. Rated PG. Plays
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, May 29, 30, and 31, at the Vancity
Theatre

In Escape to Canada, Albert Nerenberg--the writer-director of
Stupidity (about you know who, who's probably listening to us breathe
by now)--picks 2003 as Year Zero in the life of the new, post-Trudeau
Canada. You see, that summer saw a curious trifecta, with gay marriage
and pot-smoking normalized and war pushed back into the shadows.

Our refusal to kowtow to the Iraq-minded he-men royally pissed off the
Swift Boat crowd down south, typified by harridan stick figure Ann
Coulter, here seen warning Canada that it remains in North America
only at the indulgence of the United States. "We might roll over and
accidentally crush you," she threatens, thereby exhibiting poor
neighbourliness as well as an abysmal (if typical) grasp of geography.

But the movie doesn't only snap at American incivility; it trumpets
the growing number of Yanks who are fleeing here, at least
temporarily, for the opportunity to, among other things, have stoned
gay weddings with people not shipped off to combat in the morning.
These days, that's a lot of goodness in one tidy package.

Of course, as Nerenberg points out, the package isn't really all that
neat, since some aspects of the new social contract have been
unravelling in the past few years. The movie was finished before the
less-than-steep ascension of Stephen Harper--a disciplined,
well-groomed model for quiet killer fruits everywhere. But it does
address sporadic attempts to recriminalize marijuana.

The director juxtaposes the relatively mild treatment of pot activist
Marc Emery (before his arrest at the behest of American drug warriors)
versus the mind-alteringly expensive persecution of Canada's Tommy
Chong in the States--although there are frequent hints of Ottawa's
complicity with reactionary forces south of the border. (As Steve
Carell recently sermonized in The Office, "Think how funny Cheech and
Chong would have been if they didn't take drugs.")

Ultimately, the 80-minute Escape to Canada can't really weave its
anecdotal evidence into a thoroughly convincing tapestry. (Let's avoid
the word mosaic, shall we?) On the other hand, if you watch it in what
he dubs Stonervision, well What were we talking about?