Being Canadian

The premise: Robert Cohen sets out to learn more about his country of Canada and to show the world a bit about who we are by filming as he travels from one coast to the other on a whirlwind tour.

A fine idea if you actually took the time to go to every province and territory! He skips PEI, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the ENTIRE NORTH, and for the provinces he does visit, I didn't learn a thing. I'm a proud Canadian and yes I too am irritated and dismayed by those moments we have all had with (ignorant) people from other continents who seem to think Canada looks like the area by the wall in Game of Thrones or like the Americans (inexcusably ignorant since they're our neighbours!) who ask us stupid stuff like the woman in the laundromat I met just across the US/Canada border on a camping trip once who found out I was from Canada and asked me "Do you hunt?" Me: "No, definitely not." Her looking shocked/confused: "Well how do you get your meat???" Me, resisting an eye roll:"If I ate meat, I would just go to Safeway or somewhere." Her, now really surprised, "Wow, y'all have supermarkets up there!" Me: ..... Polite smile.... "Yeah, but just 2."

Of course in touristy shops there are the usual culprits: beavers, moose, totem poles, Mounties, maple syrup & plaid fleece, but surely a movie that's supposed to show a wider view of our multicultural country that's more "mosaic" than "melting pot" should work a little harder not to reinforce some of the stereotypes he's supposed to dispel (and yes, it could be done through comedy!) ZERO mention of the First Nations! NOTHING about our urban culture or musicians, artists, athletes, scientists, dancers (Royal Wpg. Ballet, Cirque du Soleil, or Spandy Andy :D) And our history didn't start with Confederation.

Okay, on occasion, there's snow in May in some parts of the country but not in Ottawa in June!

True, he's right that we do seem to have a lot of comedians and it was great to see some of them (mostly why I kept watching until the end) and I did like the theories presented about why Canadian humour is unique and what makes us funny.

Another part when he talks about what is typical Canadian food he seems to disbelieve that the answer truly is a wonderful mixture of many flavours. Poutine is the pat answer for what's a typical dish since you now find it almost anywhere in Canada in some form (Merci, Quebec!) but even in smaller cities you can often find amazing curries, weird and wonderful fusions of several types of cuisine, or great hearty home-cooked meals served in humble locations that feature foods that rival the quality from the country they originated from. We Canadians like our food!

Ok, to be fair there are a couple of funny moments, some of the comments were a bit deeper (Geddy Lee & Kim Campbell) and I wanted to like this movie, I wanted to laugh (maybe self-deprecatingly!) but I was more irritated and indignant afterwards just like some of the other reviewers from Canada.

To sum it up if someone was to determine what ice cream flavour represents Canada based upon this film they would likely choose vanilla and that is probably what they'd have said BEFORE watching it too.

You wanted to make this movie to shatter Canadian stereotypes? Then claim to be in Ottawa on June 24th and it's snowing!!! I looked it up. Has never snowed on that day. Average high 25.2 Celsius. 78.3 for you Americans.

So misleading and adding to the stereotype.

I actually can't say much more about the documentary as I actually turned it off the write this review.

Now I'm just filling in space because apparently you can't just make it short and sweet. Only 131 characters to go.

Hope you doing something fun and or different tomorrow. Always makes for an interesting day. Thanks for reading. Peace out.

This "documentary" is a parade of inferiority complexes that belong to the idiosyncrasies of comedians that drive them to do comedy and not to Canadians. It was deprecating to the point of absurdity, made no sincere attempts to answer any of it's questions and didn't dare to tread near a critical answer except by accident when a few of our more philosophically minded celebrities happened upon an thoughtful answer. I was embarrassed and angered to have watched this, it felt like a mean-spirited American mockumentary about Canada.

It completely elided our native population, was wildly dismissive of our French population, and, frankly, displayed Alberta's particular brand of narcissism.

Again, I was embarrassed to have watched this episode of One Guy Musing About His Personal Inadequacies and flabbergasted that he dared to present it as representing an entire country. Literally, shame on Mr. Cohen for this lazy pastiche of clichés presented in exaggerations of their worst framing.

Comedy writer Robert Cohen, born in Calgary, Alberta directs this documentary which tries to delve into the Canadian psyche in various ways, including Cohen's perceptions of its love-hate relationship with the United States and the Canadian inferiority complex and apparent self-deprecation.

Cohen will try and put a humorous spin on those issues, as well as a number of others, as he travels by minivan across Canada, beginning in Nova Scotia and ending in Vancouver, British Columbia for Canada Day, some 9 days later. Along the way they'll be some interviews with various citizens in different milieus, as well as the perspectives of many famous Canadians, many of whom are household names.

As Cohen will come to learn, his original premise may have been rather faulty, and I can say that as an American, who's traveled to Canada a number of times, I've admired the Canadian lifestyle, and could easily see myself living there if circumstances warranted.

Note: there were no subtitles on my DVD copy and the sound quality could have been better.

Overall, I thought this film can be humorous and filled with interesting factoids about Canada.However, it can become repetitious, at times, perhaps with trying too hard to prove the premises of the filmmaker.

Let me first say that I am proud to be Canadian and I believe that am a funny guy who loves comedies and documentaries. I wanted to love this movie! Hell, I would have settled for 'liking' it! But this was a huge let down. The director and writer 'Robert Cohen' seem to phone this one in. I read his IMDb bio and he seems to have co-written a few episodes of TV shows that I like. So I believed that this movie would be informality funny! It was NOT! Robert Cohen seems to love hearing himself talk and seems to think that he is pretty funny, but is not. At least not in this movie. It did have a lot of interviews with famous Canadians, but each being brief and non-memorable. Sure parts of the interviews made me chuckle a little, but I'm not even sure if most of them were with the director. I believe he just salvaged them from the archives. Robert Cohen (director and writer) narrates through the entire movie with his droning on and on. It's like he was trying to be a funny Michael Moore, but failed miserably. There was very little actual content in this movie. I didn't learn anything new, didn't really laugh, and found myself wanting to turn it off, but stuck with it to be loyal and was hoping it would get better. Sadly it never did. I'm guessing the only reason why this movie became a reality is that it was funded partially or in full by the government or was given huge tax breaks because we require legally to produce and air a certain percentage of Canadian content. There are other movies and documentaries about Canada which are funny. This one is not and didn't need to be made. I am actually wanting to apologize to any non-Canadians who were forced to watch this. Robert Cohen reminds me of a high school chemistry teacher who tries to be funny so the kids will think that chemistry is cool and not boring.