Review: Cole

Every year, I make sure that I see at least one or two Canadian films, just as a "when in Rome" thing.  Canadian movies don't have the budgets of American and English productions, but you can find some good young talent now and then, and the focus tends to be more on story, less on special effects.  Cole was one of this year's Canadian flicks, directed by veteran filmmaker Carl Bessai.

Cole is part slice of life, part coming of age story of a young man from a stop light-less town in Canada, a few hours north of any major population.  Cole's father is dead, and an accident has left his mother uncommunicative and with a habit of walking slowly onto the highway in front of the gas station his family owns and runs.

Cole dreams of being a writer and finally gets into a short story class he's wanted to take at the university a few hours south of his home.  The class causes all kinds of stress for Cole and those around him.  His sister Maybelline is stressed because she relies on Cole to help run the gas station and look after their mother, as her redneck boyfriend Bobby can only be relied upon to get drunk and make racist comments about her half black child.  It stresses out Cole's best friend Frogger (great name, by the way) because Cole writes semi-autobiographical stories, and Frogger doesn't like his honest portrayal.  And it stresses out Cole not only because of all the aforementioned reasons, but also because he falls for the beautiful Thandie Newton-ish Serafina.

Bessai gets solid performances from his major players: Richard de Klerk as Cole, Sonja Bennett as Maybelline, and Chad Willett as Bobby.  Michael Eisner was especially good as Frogger, delivering great laughs as Cole's beer bonging best friend, with occasional flashes of serious acting.

My complaints about the movie are about the script.  The character Bobby has absolutely no redeeming qualities and other than getting punched in the face pretty hard a few times, he never gets his due.  Serafina and her family, as the well-to-do yin to Bobby's trashy yang, come off flat and unrealistic.  They just don't approve of the small town boy driving the rusty pick up truck.  Meanwhile, she seems to be almost oblivious to Cole's realities, carelessly putting him in uncomfortable situations.

I can't say that I didn't enjoy the movie, but I thought it could have used a script doctor.  If they spent two minutes of screen time giving Bobby a redeeming quality and reworked Serafina just a bit, I think it would have worked.  As it is, I don't want my time back, but I wouldn't urge you rush out to see this one.  My imdb rating: 5/10.