Movie review: A little humour would’ve gone a long way

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This article was published 12/08/2011 (5196 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ryan Ward, the star and director of the drama Son of the Sunshine, co-wrote a juicy part for himself in this low-budget independent film. His character, Sonny Johnns, is the maladjusted son of a drug-addicted single mom. To make matters more challenging, he also suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome, causing frequent outbursts of profanity in public places, including the subway.

Sonny is a good Canadian despite his condition. He punctuates every public expletive with “Sorry.”

He is indeed in a sorry state. His fellow commuters mistake his condition for hostility, madness and menace. And if they could glimpse his dysfunctional home life, that impression would only be confirmed. Sonny’s mom (JoAnn Nordstrom) is a junkie who has freshly resumed a relationship with a man who supplies her with dope. Sonny’s bristling, hostile sister Meryl (Shantelle Canzanese) has decided to abandon her mother to her fate.

Sonny, striving for normalcy, has saved his disability checks to pay for a radical procedure that will all but eradicate the violent tics and verbal ejaculations that accompany his condition. The procedure does indeed succeed, and for the first time in his life, Sonny can make romantic overtures to a woman. Inevitably, he is drawn to Arielle (Rebecca McMahon) a beautiful but clearly disturbed woman he meets when she falls down drunk in a park. (In the bleak realm of Canfilm, this qualifies as “meeting cute.”)

In gaining the ability to socially integrate and hold down a mail clerk job, Sonny has also lost something … a talent that involves healing by touch.

As a director, Ward has undeniable talent, especially with actors. By economic necessity, the film employs no-name, non-union actors, but each of Ward’s three female co-stars bring the pain of their respective characters, with McMahon in particular delivering a fierce portrayal of a young woman for whom love is a fault line, with the prospect of emotional cataclysm just a tremor away.

Cinematographer Chayse Irvin gives the film a grimy beauty. And Ward himself is an odd but commanding screen presence.

But apart from its maudlin, irrelevant title and its oft-baffling sense of place, Son of the Sunshine’s biggest flaw is its essential humourlessness. In a brief scene, there is a hint that Sonny sometimes uses his Tourette’s as an excuse to vent his spleen against his sister. But that one bit of caustic merriment passes quickly, leaving us with a fairly grim 88 minutes of heavy drama.

Possibly, Ward reasoned that his character, who suffers the torments of Job and harbours the powers of Jesus, is too biblical to be remotely comic.

Humour isn’t just a device used to alleviate tension or deliver cheap laughs. It can bond us to characters. And frankly, Sonny Johnns needs all the glue he can get.

Son of the Sunshine aspires to low-budget greatness and comes close to achieving it. But it hits that stumbling block so common in Canadian dramas: a tone that is so serious, it becomes downright dour.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

 

MOVIE REVIEW

Son of the Sunshine
Starring Ryan Ward
88 minutes
Subject to classification
3 stars out of five