year 3 day 118

movie: The Grand Seduction
starring: Taylor Kitsch, Gordon Pinsent
genre: Comedy, Drama,
year: 2013
format: Shaw Video On Demand

plot: The entire population of a small town in Newfoundland, are in desperate need of a local doctor in order to win the bid on a factory. In order to do so, they spend a month coning a big city doctor into thinking the town is tailor made for him.

This is an English remake of the 2003 French film

Don McKellar directed this, one of the most notable names in Canadian film/television (Roadkill, Highway 61, Twitch City) along with Mary Walsh and Cathy Jones from Cod-Co and This Hour has 22 Minutes, and Peter Keleghan from the Red Green Show. You know you're in for a good showing with names like this.

Okay, so I admit, there's nothing new here, and not just because it's a remake, but because it's the kind of story you've seen more then once on Canadian tv, but it's done with such brilliant humour and a lightness that it absorbs you into it before you know it.
You believe the people in this small town are that crafty to pull out all the stops in order to get the young doctor to stay, like when the Gordon Pinsent character dresses up in a scuba suit and plants the frozen fish, or the silliness of the found money that just happens to be laying in wait every night when the doctor leaves the bar.

Taylor Kitsch, as perfect as he is in everything; there are moments when I was thinking he played the character almost too innocently. The character starts off in his first scene as this big shot doctor caught with cocaine, which sets up the idea that he's going to be this hard core ass, but by his second scene, he's shown to be a puppy. That sort of threw me as most movies progress into the character's softening. In this case he just was. And of course that just added to the idea that he's the knight in shinning armor.

Would have loved to have had Pinsent have more monologs, but then again, I love anything when it's done with a Newfie accent.