Reliably funny Exchange hits close to home By: Randall King Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Saturday, Jul. 31, 2021

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This article was published 31/07/2021 (1846 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The setting is quickly established in an opening title — “Hobart, Ontario – Godforsaken Canada, 1986” — superimposed over a lonesome highway with snow blowing over it in that wraith-like way so familiar to anyone who has driven a prairie highway in winter.

Despite screenwriter Tim Long’s Brandon, Manitoba birthplace, the inspiration for the town of Hobart is actually Exeter, Ontario, where Long’s dad ran a tractor business when the family moved from Brandon when Tim was just four years old.

Still, the movie will strike a painfully familiar chord with anyone who has walked into their house in blizzard conditions and demanded to know from their parents: “Why do we live here?”

That is our introduction to teenage Tim Long (Australian actor Ed Oxenbould), a smart, friendless kid who simultaneously loves the high art of the French New Wave and feels the absence of the most basic cultural touchstones in this rural Ontario backwater: “Hobart has no McDonalds!”

Tim sees a solution to his problems when he convinces his parents to participate in a student exchange program. But instead of getting the cool French intellectual of his dreams, the family welcomes Stéphane (Avan Jogia), a strapping charmer of Western Asian descent with a penchant for cigarettes, liquor, and girls. When Tim tries to share one of his beloved French films, Stéphane pops the tape out of the VCR and replaces it with some imported VHS porn. He explains his habit of wearing cologne to a gobsmacked Tim: “Before sex can happen in the pants, it must first happen in the nose.”

Even more infuriating for Tim: Stéphane easily wins friends at his school, while Tim’s social status remains stuck in neutral. It becomes clear to Stéphane that Tim is too busy disparaging the townies to see potential friends, most notably Brenda (Jayli Wolf), a happily eccentric classmate who clearly carries a torch for the effete cineaste.

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Given the ‘80s setting and the teen milieu, the movie could easily slip into some John Hughes-style nostalgic romp. But the movie admirably doesn’t take that bait. Tim Long — the screenwriter, not the character — is a longtime writer-producer for The Simpsons and director Dan Mazer comes from Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat/Ali G cinematic universe. Evidently, neither has much taste for Hughes’ bourgeois tendencies. (Most of the characters are on the impoverished side of the middle-class spectrum.) And where Hughes’s comedy could be racist — Sixteen Candles, anyone? — this film is keenly aware of the racial issues that roil beneath the surface of small-town, predominantly white communities.

At the same time, both know a lot about landing a joke. They also know to stack the deck with a solid comic cast. Ed Oxenbould holds the centre, as a kind of straight man for a comically cruel universe. But Vancouver actor Avan Joga is a real find as Stéphane, charismatic, macho but poignant when required. As Brenda, Jayli Wolf joyfully punctures any preconceptions of a young Indigenous woman, letting her nerd flag fly.

Among the supporting cast is Justin Hartley as Rothbauer, a combination of teacher and OPP officer (OK, that’s a stretch) who makes trouble for our heroes. Jennifer Irwin is a hoot as Tim’s accommodating mom (”Who wants French toast? I guess you would call that toast…”), Melanie Leishman (a veteran of the locally shot series Todd and the Book of Pure Evil and House Party) plays a teacher who falls under Stéphane’s spell, and former Winnipegger David Huband is a cop who is clearly far too acquiescent for the job.

They all make The Exchange a reliably funny piece, although I, as a one-time socially maladjusted young man with a snobby taste in cinema, might admit this film literally hit me where I lived.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing