Pity about the weak script, but by some miracle the director has managed to dovetail British and Canadian humour. The two men are a weepy alcoholic and a hardline Scot, author of a bestselling book. The arrival of the blonde English ex-wife of Richard wearing a faux leopard-skin coat is the culmination of class horror: she was married to an award-winning author but dresses like a Primark frump. Betrayals, interrelations, guilt, self-acclaim. Grieving in advance, it's all borderline histrionic. How many British citizens in the last century have actually read Middlemarch by one of the country's greatest authors? My guess is around 2%, including those forced at school, who never reached the end. While the night scene in the bar with her agent deserves an award for poor acting (not entirely their fault, the script is uneven), the café set with the daughter, boyfriend (his wife), and mother is hilarious and too short; more competent screenwriters would have drawn it out into a Greek tragedy/farce. "We are giants, full of rage and joy," says the stricken mother [1:06]. And the best but too-brief comedy scene takes place in yet another café when Kaitlyn meets her online date in the presence of her biological father and the step-sister. The boy is a cute ingenue, eminently eligible, does not even know that the father is an icon of world literature, so the playing field is level. Pity the writer/director didn't take the macabre further, and instead we get plinking pianos and classic American reckoning. In the end, however the Canadians might pitch their differences from their neighbours across the border, they are on the same continent after all (and in the same boat), sharing the abhorrent history of displacement and genocide of the native populations. Not a single non-white non-Caucasian individual in the entire movie. No wonder a third of your tax-paying population is p*ssed as hell.
