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| Available at Amazon.com |
Late night host Craig Ferguson, impressionist Kevin Pollak, The Newsroom‘s Peter Keleghan, and Pushing Daisies‘s Anna Friel star in “bleak comedy” Niagara Motel.
Pollak plays a pornographer and booby bar owner looking to corrupt a young and pregnant Québécois waitress. (Niagara Falls is the Disneyland of the booby bar.) Keleghan plays an aging, unemployed yuppie married to a castrating hausfrau. Friel plays a recovering junkie looking to retrieve her baby from foster care. (Speaking of boobies, Friel shows hers.)
What, might you ask, do these characters have in common? Well, nothing. Their stories never intersect in a meaningful way; these people all just happen to be staying at the same hotel. The movie consists of three separate tales, which share a common setting. Ferguson’s character plays a minor part in all of the stories, but his character is involved in his own minor storyline. Although, Ferguson’s character’s storyline consists solely of him being drunk all the time because his wife fell over the falls during their honeymoon.
With the film set-up as it is, coupled with a lean run time, each performer only has about 20 minutes of screen time to develop his or her character. This sort of thing is made even more difficult for the actors by a script that relegates its characters to TV Movie cliches.
All things considered, the performances are good, but Yates’s film is a uneven mix of humor and tragedy. The film’s aim seems not to be dark comedy, but rather depressing comedy. The resultant movie is the bastard Canadian offspring of Love, Actually and Tree’s Lounge.
The film also features Wendy Crewson (the mom from the Santa Clause trilogy), Caroline Dhavernas (from Wonderfalls), Tom Barnett (who is not Tom Bodett, the Motel 6 guy), and Krista Bridges (Motown from Land of the Dead).
The movie looks and sounds fine.
Spanish Subtitles baby!
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Allumination Filmworks presents Niagara Motel. Directed by: Gary Yates. Starring: Craig Ferguson, Kevin Pollak, Anna Friel, Wendy Crewson, Caroline Dhavernas, Peter Keleghan, Tom Barnett. Running time: 88 minutes. Rating: R. Released on DVD: February 5, 2008. Available at Amazon.com
About ML Kennedy
