Love at First Sight

For the past few days, I've been reviewing various movies and TV specials featuring an "SNL"er in the beginning of their careers. So now we're in 1977 with the release of Dan Aykroyd's first starring feature, an independent Canadian movie called Love at First Sight. A partly ironic title since Aykroyd plays a blind man named Roy. One day, a woman named Shirley (Mary Ann McDonald) visits the store Roy works at and tries to buy something. Something develops from there. I'll just now say that I found the whole movie sweet and whatever humor that develops comes gradually as the movie goes on. I was really nicely surprised by both the film and Aykroyd's performance in a role quite unlike what he'd become more famous for. So on that note, I highly recommend Love at First Sight.

Dan Aykroyd plays a blind man (Roy) being courted by a woman (Shirley) living with her controlling, unpleasant father: I know this is the 1970s, but Women's Liberation had already been underway & the ERA in the USA had not been quashed yet. Shirley's father won't let her maternal grandmother live in, won't let her work even at some crappy job like McDonald's, wants her to marry his assistant at the gas station he runs despite her antipathy for him, and openly mocks Roy's disability when he comes over for dinner. It is no wonder she & Roy eventually run away together to live in a different city: with a father like that you need a buffer zone. There are cheap laughs in the movie, like Roy attempting to drive, but the best part in my opinion was watching Aykroyd at a younger age, esp. with the mono-brow (was it real or added for humour? What was that stuff about Roy looking like a model?). One last question: the Colonel Sanders cameo and repeated references to KFC--what was that?

"Love at First Sight" is Dan Aykroyd's first film, and although low budget, it's funny, funny, funny.

Don't let the grimey run-down appearance of the film and its location scare you off. Set in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in the early 1970's, LAFS is the story of Roy, a 20-something blind man who falls unexpectedly in love with Shirley, an unemployed young woman in search of a love and a future.

Shirley's father however, has different plans for his daughter. Believing that Roy is an unfit match for Shirley, he forbids the two from seeing one another ever again. With some surprise financial assistance from Shirley's grandmother, Shirley and Roy soon elope together to Niagara Falls, where they open a successful restaurant and live happily ever after.

LAFS is quirkey, well written and the characters are hilarious. Shirley's bigoted, beer guzzling dumb Canuck of a father is alone worth the price of admission.

Also, keep your eye out for all sorts of funny little details going on in the background, and just try to note all of the somewhat puzzling KFC references in the film (including a cameo by Col. Sanders himself).

LAFS is a sweetheart of a film, and it also contains one of my favourite (and strangest) movie lines ever: "Go ahead Shirley, touch the janitor's genitals."

This was a sweet movie, what it lacks in plot it makes up for in charm. The low budget and lack of a real sound track, add to this. It feels like your watching your high school's two geeky awkward kids finally start dating, and it is just unbelievably sweet.

In some ways this is just like every other low budget easy comedy made during this time, but the couple of shirley and Roy give it a new tenderness. Slow in some parts sure, but theres a strong realness to this movie. It plays out like how you imagine your parents meet, a fantasy sure, but based on something that you yourself know to be very true.

Consensus: sweet, real, and only an hour and 20 minutes

If you like this movie I recommend Rosalie goes Shopping

When I was living in Toronto in the late 70's I went to school across the street from the local Canadian National Institute for the Blind and there was a young fellow working the desk there that I interacted with over a couple of years. When I first saw Aykroyd's performance in Love at First Sight I was shocked. It was a uncanny impression of the fellow I knew from CNIB. I've always wondered whether this is where he got his inspiration. It is a very nuanced performance. What a great talent Dan Aykroyd is.

And the film has a lot of very funny moments. Watch out for the first time he takes her home. Genius.