Being Canadian (2015)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

"Being Canadian" is an okayish documentary but that is how far my praise goes. It is just okayish. Mildly entertaining, at times, and certainly not funny in the slightest. Now before I start I am English so I won't be approaching this from a Canadian perspective as I am an outsider. I do love visiting Canada though which is the main reason I watched this.I have visited the great white north and it is a great place to go look around. Saying that, this documentary does miss a few provinces on its trip around Canada and it seems stupid to me that it misses the Yukon Territory, which is a stunning wilderness, and Prince Edward Island which is a gorgeous place. The journey they take in this film is so rushed that it doesn't feel complete and I can't help but think if they allowed more time to explore properly they would have made a better film. The general question Robert Cohen asks is "what is it that makes Canada and its citizens great?" This is a pretty ambiguous question and one that is answered very poorly by Cohen. He comes to a pretty weak conclusion and to get there just simply mentions clichés about Canada and poses them to famous Canadians. While it is quant to go "holy sh*t Mike Myers is Canadian!!" the amusement wears off very quickly and you start to think what the actual point of him being there is. Most of the famous Canadians don't really shed any light on national history, they just cop out going for the boring questions that people think of to ask a Canadian. Cohen does ask the help of some Canadian history experts but they have about 3 minutes of screen time….that's it! I would have preferred a bit more about Canadian history, as an outsider looking in. The only thing that is really said is that "it is not taught in American schools" which is a bit of a stupid thing to say really. In English schools we aren't taught about Scottish history or Irish history. Just because two countries are attached doesn't give an obligation to teach each other's history. The comedy in this falls so flat at times that it is actually destroying the tone of the documentary. I do understand that some documentaries can be funny as well as educational but in this film it just fails so hard it makes the people look dumb when they say something profound about Canada. For instance there is this stupid bit where Cohen is interviewing Dave Foley in bed with both of them half naked FOR NO REASON!??! It is such a crap joke and has no real context in anything.I wish they had done better with this film as there are some things that were interesting and some interesting facts were presented in a fun way which was very entertaining. I did like the way it shouts Canada's achievements and it did, in places, make me think of the important contributions Canada has made to the world. However most of the documentary was taken up with rehashing Canadian clichés and the input from all of the stars left me a bit underwhelmed. This documentary did not feel like a labour of love done by people who really loved the subject they were talking about. It is just a star studded mess. Sorry EH!

I never ever took the time to write a review on a movie, but this movie, I could not help myself. This movie is a documentary exclusively thinking about English Canada. The author rode through Quebec asking about maple syrup and an underage little girl presenting a whole culture. We clearly see how English Canada does NOT understand Quebec. If the author would have been serious about presenting Canada, he should have thought about the following items presenting the second most important culture of the country: Humour: Just for Laughs Festival created by Gilbert Rozon, Andre Phillipe Gagnon (which went on the Tonight Show in the 80s). Jean- René Dufort, Infoman. Sports: Curling? Seriously: Basketball was invented in Montreal at McGill College. Baseball, we had Jackie Robinson. Beat that Toronto. By the way, we have the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Canada, one of the biggest events on planet earth every year. Hockey? What about the Montreal Canadien, the team that won the Stanley Cup most often in history, and how this team defined our emancipation as a people thanks to Maurice Richard? Music: What about Celine Dion, Arcade Fire, Murray Head? Celebrities: By the way, William Shatner is from Montreal. You could have asked him his thought when you talked about Quebec. Television: What about La Petite Vie, Biggest ratings ever in Quebec. Movies: Patrick Huard with Colm Feore (Bon Cop Bad Cop) = Biggest movie box office EVER in Canada. EVER, as in this movie producer can never expect to get to the level of what a Quebec movie did in ratings in all of Canada. This movie confirms the Canadian solitudes of French Canadian versus English Canadian. Not even talking about the fact that independence has been in the thoughts of more than 35% of the people for the last 40 years is quite insulting to saying that this is a documentary about Being Canadian. Also, bypassing any Native Amerindian reserve is also an insult to the whole of Canada. Definitely a movie thought to make Stephen Harper and political conservatives happy, with Western Canada thought process, not taking in consideration the duality and coexistence of two separate and truly distinctive societies living together. Don't expect to see the full picture of Canada thanks to this movie.

Comedy writer Robert Cohen, born in Calgary, Alberta directs this documentary which tries to delve into the Canadian psyche in various ways, including Cohen's perceptions of its love-hate relationship with the United States and the Canadian inferiority complex and apparent self-deprecation.Cohen will try and put a humorous spin on those issues, as well as a number of others, as he travels by minivan across Canada, beginning in Nova Scotia and ending in Vancouver, British Columbia for Canada Day, some 9 days later. Along the way they'll be some interviews with various citizens in different milieus, as well as the perspectives of many famous Canadians, many of whom are household names.As Cohen will come to learn, his original premise may have been rather faulty, and I can say that as an American, who's traveled to Canada a number of times, I've admired the Canadian lifestyle, and could easily see myself living there if circumstances warranted.Note: there were no subtitles on my DVD copy and the sound quality could have been better.Overall, I thought this film can be humorous and filled with interesting factoids about Canada.However, it can become repetitious, at times, perhaps with trying too hard to prove the premises of the filmmaker.

Truth be told I didn't knew much about Canada until I watched this piece of Documentary...A bit surprised knowing not everyone in Canada lives in Igloos...Whosoever taking a shot at understanding Canada in quick fashion by watching this documentary would definitely like Canada more than before... Will wait for part 2 probably after a decade or so when Being Canadian mandatorily covers immigrants of past 20 years from other parts of world and their influence on Canadian culture and adding glory to the already shining establishment. (Not sure but 10 lines of text as an IMDb requirement for a documentary is like telling everything in the review itself).