Director: Warren P. Sonoda Cast: Jason Jones, Samantha Bee, Dylan Everett, Nick McKinlay, Mike Beaver, Peter Keleghan, Jayne Eastwood, Dave Foley 93 minutes NR
Premiering at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival® to great fanfare, Coopers’ Camera must be one of the most caustic comedies ever made. Mercilessly detailing the disintegration of a truly dysfunctional family Christmas after the arrival of an estranged uncle, the film is as hilarious as it is excruciating. It’s Christmas Day, 1985. Gord Cooper (Jason Jones, Phil the Alien) is thrilled with the brand-new video camera he gave his wife and elated at the thought of recording every little detail of the holiday fun. His wife, Nancy (Samantha Bee, Ham & Cheese, The Love Guru), is more excited – suspiciously excited – at the thought of the pending visit by her husband’s brother Tim (Peter Keleghan, Niagara Motel, television’s Slings and Arrows). She is also several months pregnant with the couple’s third child, a fact Coopers’ Camera plays for all its unseemly glory.
Jones and Bee are at the top of their form, leading an unbeatable ensemble cast. Each actor contributes to the film’s scathing, cringe-laden charm: Keleghan exudes a perfect small-time sleaze, while Mike Beaver (Ham & Cheese, Phil the Alien), as Uncle Nick, plays the Christmas dinner guest from hell. Then there’s Jayne Eastwood (Snow Cake, Real Time) as the anti-social live-in grandmother, who insists on retiring to bed early, requesting that they simply slip the turkey under her door. And in what is undoubtedly one of the strangest recurring cameo appearances of the year, Dave Foley helps the film feel like a who’s who of Canadian comedy. Shot in the style of an old VHS home movie and blessed with a brilliant cast, Coopers’ Camera taps into proud, zany Canadian comic traditions, recalling such favourites as SCTV and Kids in the Hall. It’s one of those rare comedies that keeps getting better as its characters dig themselves into deeper and deeper holes, yet it also achieves an almost surreal poignancy in its penultimate scene. Few films accurately capture the holiday season; Coopers’ Camera is one of them.
As a bonus we will, once again, be showing the best of Canadian short films with our Saturday afternoon feature, COOPER’S CAMERA.
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