This movie is bad. Period. First of all, too many small things don't make any sense. For instance, in the very first scene she walks into a sex addicts anonymous meeting, presumably the "joke" was that it was a sex addicts meeting, not AA. She walks into a room with a bunch of people sitting silently in a circle. She sits down and then FINALLY a woman begins speaking, mid-sentence. Could they not give her a full line? The joke presumably being, she's older and bigger and she's saying dirty stuff. It fell flat. All I want to know is WHY they were just sitting there in silence. Were they praying? It doesn't matter in the "big picture" way; it doesn't affect the narrative much, but WHY?! Or when Johnny 3 Fingers (Jesse Lipscome) rubs eggs on Giant Man (Quinton Aaron) saying "these eggs have been in my fridge 3 months"
Has Craddock ever bought, kept, or used an egg before? An egg in a fridge 3 months, is a normal egg not a rotten one, as implied by the acting as though the egg stinks. These types of poorly written moments play out over and over throughout this ill-spent 96 minutes. They add up, and they will annoy you I will say that Quinton Aaron is giving his best, and it shows. He is lovable. But for what it's worth, he plays a heroin addict and he does not even remotely pass for a believable junkie. And, fitting with the rest of this non-sense, he's that rare breed of junkie who only goes through a very brief minor montage of withdrawal after many days, possibly weeks, without a fix. It was nice to know that Albertan and Canadian money went into flying the young Carter Thicke in from California for a few lines...and Lipscombe's wife is a saint for taking a speaking part and not putting real actresses through the misery of auditioning for this crap...but, I digress...that's all just standard nepotism flourishing... The biggest problem with this movie is in its off-putting representations. While he made this before #MakeItAwkward, Lipscombe, the self-styled face of Canadian Anti- Racism, had ample opportunity to speak to his buddy, writer/director Chris Craddock, about the many problematic (read: racist) stereotypes going on (both Black and Asian stereotypes abound in this romp), but he clearly did not #MakeItAwkward and happily donned a black do-rag, a gold grill, face tats (drawn in blue Bic pen), and a disgustingly stereotypical accent that mostly sounds like the most offensive Jamaican accent you can imagine. I mean, I get that it's fun playing a bad guy but, C'mon! I've turned down an audition or two because I didn't feel like the world needed another dead prostitute, another abused single-mom, or another victim of a horrific gang rape. Likewise, Lipscombe had the opportunity to decline in favor of more positive representations, much like how his proclaimed idols Denzel Washington and Sidney Poitier have generally refused to pander to stereotypes and made massive careers, and are held to a high esteem, for doing so. What it really comes down to, and is the responsibility of filmmakers and actors alike is in asking, "is this the kind of role that is a good and fair representation of a race/gender/sex/age/body type/class
?" and if not, ask "what is the purpose?" There is no mistaking that this film doesn't have a solid reason why it represents Asian and Black people the way that it does. My final gripe is with the poster boasting all the illustrious film festivals this cinematic misfortune has played, presumably to an audience. Cannes? Really? No. Not really. Google it. A festival in Cannes perhaps but not the illustrious Cannes Film Festival. This was "Official Selection" at the International PanAfrican Film Festival. Anyhow, enough of this malarkey. Seriously, don't bother with this one. And if you do, I hope you don't have to pay.
