First things first, a confession. This may not exactly be a second look for me and this film. Not because I have not seen it before. I have seen it during its endless reruns on Comedy Central in the late 90’s and early 00’s. And not because I have watched it since then, because I have absolutely not ever felt a strong desire to go back to it. This may not be a legitimate second look because this is the first time I have ever seen the film in its entirety instead of picking it up somewhere in progress. I can’t say that the extra effort to actually seek out and watch the film front to back made it any better, but I do feel at least that I may have caught more of it since I was not reading a book or playing a Game Boy at the same time.
For background, if you were unaware, this film was written, produced and directed by Michael Moore. The same Micheal Moore of Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, and Fahrenheit 9/11 fame. It still remains his only fiction film, and he reportedly had plenty of trouble getting it made, maybe enough to have him swear off normal film production forever. Or it could have been the immensely negative reaction to the movie which was disliked by critics and audiences.
The plot is thin but amusing enough. With the end of the Cold War American’s anger at their circumstances is turning inward, and an unpopular president needs a new foreign enemy to blame things on. Through various circumstances they decide that Canada will be that new enemy, and they seek to arrange (with a very compliant media) to start a cold war with our neighbors to the north. This plot works too well and ends up scooping up a bunch of dimwitted Americans that take the new war too seriously and causes chaos on both sides of the border.
The first thing that shocked me after so many years was how dark some of the jokes about economic depression were. The movie largely takes place in Niagara Falls, NY. The early plot deals with the closing of a massive weapons factory in town. Most of the towns people have been put out of work and suicide rates are sky rocketing. An opening narration from a reporter mentions that the local sheriff’s department is paying their deputies $25 for stopping someone from jumping off the falls, and $50 for fishing their bodies out of the river below the falls. We then cut to our heroes played by John Candy and Rhea Perlman, standing at the bottom of the falls with big nets, yelling at someone to jump. They only relent in their taunting when they realize it is one of their friends, and they decide to shoot him to stop him from jumping. Yikes.
This brand of dark humor continues throughout the movie, and to be honest, in this day and age that level of hard edged cynicism hits pretty well all things considered. You have jokes about the police acquiring tons of assault weapons from closing arms factories. Jokes about unpopular presidents and their approval going up when people mistakenly think they have been killed. Jokes about the military not being allowed to use special forces against caucasians. Hell there is even a blink and you miss it joke about the CIA dealing drugs to cities.
Those jokes above are the ones that probably would land even when the movie came out, even if maybe only to certain audiences. The movie is also chock full of jokes that make you wince in this day and age. They drop a Canada is the 51st state joke in the first 30 minutes, and later an advisor to the president is mocked for bringing up the possibility of declaring war against international terrorism. The president’s staff is also elated when the DOW holds on to a small one day gain.
Aside from the various political jokes, the only other bit that worked for me was Dan Akroyd and John Candy doing almost an homage to the Roman graffiti scene from Life of Brian. The characters get stopped by an Ontario Provincial Police officer while driving a truck covered in anti- Canadian slogans. Instead of arresting them he makes them write all the slogans again in French in order to comply with bilingual laws. That got a chuckle from me and was one of the only segments that had made a strong enough impression on me twenty years ago that I was looking for it on this go around.
Speaking of Akroyd, a point in favor of the movie is just how stacked the cast is for a comedy. You have Alan Alda as an unnamed president,Rip Torn as a crazed general, the aforementioned John Candy and Rhea Perlman as gun loving cops, Kevin Pollak as the defense executive turned National Security Advisor, Steven Wright as a mountie, even James Carville pops up at the Pentagon. Wallace Shawn also shows up in the end montage as the previously unseen Canadian Prime Minister.
That moves me on to the many many jokes that landed flat for me. The idea that the defense industry is in bed with the administration is told as a joke, but that is barely a commentary and it doesn’t have any of the bite of the other political bits. The cops are all obsessed with COPS the tv show, which is just pretty standard stuff. There are some jokes about the military accidentally destroying hospitals, a pretty tasteless Rodney King joke, and most of the nationality based humor is some pretty broad stereotypes (both Russian and Canadian). The ease with how people form creepy militias based on what they hear on the news, also doesn’t seem funny in this day and age. The accompanying scenes of militia members setting up their own checkpoints in the town likewise are not very funny in our current America.
The main thing that the movie suffers for, and one that maybe I had not noticed when watching it in bits and pieces on cable TV over the years, is that most of the funnier ideas are dumped in the first half, and many of the thinner bits pile up in the back half. The movie feels long for its 90 minutes, and there is a disjointed nature to some of the scenes that makes it feel like there may have been more connective bits that were left behind in the editing process, or just weren’t there to begin with given the inexperience of the writer/director. This is kind of a let down, as the cast was strong enough that there could have been something to this movie if it had been handled more deftly.
After having watched it again and in its fullness, I don’t think I could recommend Canadian Bacon as a movie. It has enough jokes that you could probably make a decent Youtube video out of the best bits, but there are too many stinkers that drag it down and the main plot is not done well enough to be worth a watch to see how all the scenes fit together. The fact that the movie has almost become relevant again is an indictment against reality, not an endorsement of the movie. If Moore had sought out some co-writers or maybe handed it off to a decent director, there may have been something here. As it stands it remains a movie best caught in bits and pieces because there was nothing else on and South Park starts right after it.
Miscellaneous Thoughts
- I forgot to mention how much I cherished Rip Torn’s reading of “Scum like you make a civil war all screwed up and confusing”
- The movie kept trying to shoehorn in racial jokes centering around a Black cop played by Bill Nunn, but most of them felt pretty unfunny.
- I also enjoyed the three American characters trying to sing patriotic songs as they drive through Canada, and realizing they don’t really know the words to any of them.
- Proof that there had to be a bunch of deleted material is the fact that you got Wallace Shawn to be your Canadian Prime Minister, and all you put in your movie is a still photo during the ending montage.
- Proof that Moore could have used some help is that he just ended his movie by ripping off the ending style of Animal House. Between that and the Monty Python inspired scene it is a big swing to reference more popular comedies in your middling one.
- This was the last film starring John Candy to get a release, which makes it hurt a little more that it was not very good. Then again, Wagons East, his other final film, was not great either. Just bad luck all around.