Dave Foley

Coopers’ Camera aka Coopers’ Christmas (2008)

Coopers’ Camera aka Coopers’ Christmas (2008)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, July 2020) Coming from the depths of the Canadian film back catalogue emerges Coopers’ Christmas, a surprising, moderately entertaining dark comedy. Here, sour Christmas humour meets the found-footage genre, as a “1985” Christmas is filmed with a “VHS” video-camera. (It’s clearly not, but that’s a good thing—the real thing would be unwatchable in SD.) The dysfunctional nature of the family gathering quickly becomes apparent, and so does the coarse sense of humour of the film in which even killing kids while drunk driving is a laugh line. Our characters are almost all spectacularly flawed, and those issues all come to the surface during a tense Christmas Eve. You have to have some innate misanthropy to appreciate the results, especially as the humour gets raunchier and weirder with mixed parentage and misgendered characters. The actors are all up for it, with special mention to Dave Foley for a comic performance that’s as exposed as it’s brave in some ways. Coopers’ Christmas is not for everyone, and the ending doesn’t quite pull everything together. Nonetheless, it’s not a bad entry in the dark humour Christmas genre, and it’s well worth dusting off once in a while—considering its Canadian nature and restrained distribution, you’ll be lucky to find anyone else who has seen it.

Freeloaders (2012)

Freeloaders (2012)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, January 2014) I have some affection for dumb comedies, and that sometimes translates into a satisfied shrug to describe a film that’s objectively bad. So it is with Freeloaders, an unchallenging comedy about a group of moochers forced to move out of a Los Angeles house when their rock-star host decides to sell his home and move to New York. A few episodic sequences ensue, followed by a tackled-on ending that the protagonists don’t really have to work for. Structurally, the script is a mess and the characters barely deserve any sympathy. But if you’re in the mood for this kind of comedy, Freeloaders fits expectations: It’s not meant to be smart, but it has a few celebrity cameos (Olivia Munn has an unflattering walk-on, Denise Richards only has to be nice, while Richard Branson is asked to look bemused) and The Counting Crows’s Adam Duritz, who also produced the film- is the house owner being so kind to the titular freeloaders, ends up concluding the film with a spirited performance of “Hanginaround” that you will be humming for days. Freeloaders features actors doing their best at being likable and lays on the jokes until a few of them sticks. Dave Foley is most remarkable in a heavily self-deprecating role as himself, while Jane Seymour gets a few laughs as a high-powered real estate agent. Otherwise, it’s a bunch of cheap jokes and irresponsible behavior that make up most of the film, with a few ill-advised romantic moments meant to bloat the film up to 77 minutes. Still, it has a bit of charm and charm is often enough to make a difference in low-budget, low-wit comedies. Freeloaders will make you grin if that’s what you’re looking for, but it’s worth remembering that it’s not going to be a particularly good film and that better comedies are likely to be available from the exact same sources that will rent, show or stream this film.

Monster Brawl (2011)

Monster Brawl (2011)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2013) This “film” isn’t any good, but at least it gets points for monster-movie homage, unorthodox narrative structure and cost-effectiveness.  A low-low budget Canadian production, Monster Brawl is less a movie than an attempt to put horror monsters into a 90-minutes wrestling brawl special: Eight monsters battle it out until only one is left, and everything else is context… which is to say filler.  Much of the filmmaker’s cleverness is spent stretching their reported 200,000$ budget to accommodate eight distinctive monsters and moody brawling pit.  (The graphic design work of the film is pretty good, though, as so is Lance Henriksen’s God-voiced video-game narration.)  Color commentators, either taken from the wrestling world or clearly inspired by WWE specials, add very little to the proceedings: While it’s fun to see Dave Foley in just about anything, he doesn’t get much to do but simulate inebriation and spout sports-commentator clichés.  The problem with Monster Brawl is that the fights are dull and everything surrounding them is even duller: The fleeting attempts at a narrative framework are undermined by a conclusion that cuts away without resolving anything or providing satisfactory closure.  The acting isn’t particularly good, although the make-up makes up for it somewhat.  With a decent budget and more imaginative writers, this could have been quite a bit better.  But failing that, and given the above, it goes without saying that if you’re not a fan of wrestling and/or monster-movies, then there’s little of interest in Monster Brawl.  Trust me; I’m one of you and I just checked on your behalf.