Review: The Grand Seduction
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
[Grade: C-] A remake of the 2003 Québécois film Seducing Dr. Lewis, The Grand Seduction is a toothless and eager-to-please comedy content to shuffle by on the likability of its cast.
City Paper grade: C-
Once a thriving fishing harbor, the tiny Newfoundland village of Tickle Head is now a virtual ghost town, its residents almost all living on welfare or packing up to find work inland. The town’s last chance at resuscitation arrives with the possibility of luring a new petroleum plant and its resulting jobs, which necessitates attracting a doctor for insurance purposes. A remake of the 2003 Québécois film Seducing Dr. Lewis, The Grand Seduction is a toothless and eager-to-please comedy content to shuffle by on the likability of its cast. That burden is shouldered almost entirely by Brendan Gleeson as a lifelong resident who inherits the mayor’s office and masterminds an elaborate deception to convince a big-city doctor to call the village home. As the doc, Taylor Kitsch only slightly relaxes his usual wooden blankness in the quaint setting, and everyone else comes from a pool of stock small-town eccentrics. The lazy humor arises from the “adorable old townsfolk” trick bag employed by middlebrow trifles like Waking Ned Devine and The Full Monty, while the requisite romantic subplot is barely fleshed out enough to mention. Director Don McKellar — a contributor to more genuinely quirky fare like Highway 61 and Last Night — keeps the proceedings brisk and bland, but the film’s core conceit is trite and muddled. Gleeson constantly trumpets the value of an honest day’s work, but the town’s residents triumph by lowering themselves to beat their corporate “saviors” at their own dishonest game.
