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 Director: Warren P. Sonoda
Cast: Jason Jones, Samantha Bee, Dylan Everett, Nick McKinlay, Mike Beaver, Peter Keleghan, Jayne Eastwood, Dave Foley
Run Time: 93 minutes
Country: Canada
Year: 2008
Language: English
Rating: Not rated
Premiering at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival®
to great fanfare, Coopers’ Camera has got to 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 of
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 – a real-life married couple who regularly
mine the comedy of discomfort on Jon Stewart’s The Daily
Show – 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 – a feature that
perfectly depicts the agonizing torment of a family Christmas.
“It’s . . . exciting to see some of Toronto’s best comedy talent
go for broke.” – Jason Anderson, Eye Weekly
Reviews: www.imdb.com/title/tt1242777/externalreviews
Official site www.cooperscamerathemovie.com
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