Walk All Over Me

This is a movie that sort of starts off at a slower pace but as it trundles along, gets more involving and enjoyable. Really liking some of the off-beat, Canadian humour and with charming, engaging characters. I think the 18 rating is not a good reflection of the content. It's neither sexy or a violent thriller but being hard to classify is great plus point.

Naive small town girl Alberta (Leelee Sobieski) loses an envelop full of money. She runs from thugs escaping on a bus going to big city Vancouver. She reconnects with her old babysitter Celene (Tricia Helfer) who reluctantly lets her stay. She's surprised that Celene is now working from home as a dominatrix. She spills on Celene's expensive outfit. With no money from her grocery store job, she tries to pay Celene back by taking on Paul (Jacob Tierney) who applied to be Celene's client. Rene (Lothaire Bluteau) barges in with brothers Aaron and Isaac looking to retrieve his money from Paul. Alberta is over her head.

This is an odd quirky Canadian indie that should be funnier that it is. Sobieski is playing clueless but it's oddly unreal. It would be funnier to be broader. She may not be good enough as a comedic actress but she has never looked hotter. Her boobs look great and her pretend dominatrix dancing is sexy fun. At least, the music is fun. Helfer has a dry wit. There are a few good smirk-worthy moments which keeps this on track.

Tricia Helfer sparkles nicely in this "Bizarro World" comedy directed by Robert Cuffley. In some ways it hearkens back to the mid-1930s and to some of the great screwball comedies of that era, except with a much harder and daring edge to it. She's an old friend of the bungling ingénue from a hick town ( Lee Lee Sobieski ), who has made a niche for herself in the big bad city by becoming a pro dominatrix.

For those who don't know, being a dominatrix is a lifestyle choice with psychological and sexual overtones, but rarely involving actual sex. It is about psycho-sexual mind games and role-playing, with its own rules and subculture. In all of that, Helfer's characterization and charm seems to be admirably suited for the choice of Celine.

Sobieski takes a brilliant turn as the goofy young friend who simply cannot keep out of her own way. There is in all of this comedic action a dark undercurrent of criminal behavior, as Sobieski's character -- ironically named Alberta -- blunders her way into and out of real trouble where there's real violence done to the real people in her life. She's like a lightning rod in that regard.

The genius of the film lies in how the director and these two superb actresses move the story forward, almost effortlessly, as every time Alberta stumbles into a predicament whatever she does next fails to resolve the problem. It only brings a worse and yet even funnier predicament.

The DVD presentation is terrific and there's just enough of Sobieski's beautiful body shown ( for the right reasons ), to warrant this film having a most sensible R rating. There's just too much sexual role playing in the plot for young teens, and it is not something in the way of entertainment for pre-teen youngsters, at all, period.

Aside from that caveat, this is one goofy, wacky, well-done comedy.

The criminal behavior involved in the plot is diluted somewhat by the hapless nature of the three criminal characters. They are bad hombres for sure but just so darned incompetent that they don't really frighten anyone, all that much ... adults, that is.

They are not misunderstood, it should be noted, these characters -- but they are comically incoherent and impulsive.

So this film ought to and does get seven stars out of ten, with two additional boxes of popcorn tossed in for good measure.

Whilst, for the main part I found this distinctly average, the awesome cleavage of Leelee Sobieski kept me glued to the screen.

The sight of her wonderful breasts was truly something to behold. All the cast do a fine job, and there are some laughs to be had!! I'm not sure why it was billed as a thriller.

This is the kind of film you could watch if you were sick in bed with the flu and there was nothing else on TV. Beyond that, consider lowing your expectations.

I remember when Leelee Sobieski and Natalie Portman were considered rivals in the media for being precocious up-and-coming teenage actresses. Both girls have grown up, and Hollywood has done them no favours. Ms. Portman will have to work very, very hard to overcome Queen Amidala, and Ms. Sobieski has gone from the supernova superwierd vixen in Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" to, well, this film.

That's not to say she doesn't have appeal, at least to some folks. In this show, however, talent is wasted, ability is squandered, and the audience is assumed to be sick in bed with the flu. I would compare this film to "Bon Cop, Bad Cop", another Canadian production that took actors with chops and turned them into chopped liver.

Put another way, I think if you laughed uproariously at the humour in "Bon Cop, Bad Cop", and you never figured out that "Harry Buttman" in that film was a parody of a real person, then you will love "Walk All Over Me". I didn't think "Bon Cop, Bad Cop" was funny at all, nor entertaining, but it was "Heat" combined with "Ghostbusters" compared to this turkey.

Screwball comedies work because the humour arises from the peculiar logic of the situation. "Walk All Over Me" has precious little logic, just a long list of cliché peculiarities that fail to amuse or arouse.