You’ll laugh, you’ll cry… you’ll get the munchies

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/03/2020 (1997 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Movies about dealing marijuana generally fall into the comedy category.

You would think this would especially apply to Canadian movies co-starring Colin Mochrie.

In fact, Toronto filmmaker Geordie Sabbagh’s shoestring-budgeted feature Canadian Strain starts off with a very comic tone, as seasoned Hogtown pot dealer Anne Banting (Jess Salgueiro) discovers, after 10 years engaged in the illicit trade, her vocation will be coming to a hard end with the impending legalization of cannabis in 2018.

Sabbagh frames Anne’s career crisis with old ‘60s-era government footage about the RCMP and their heroism in beating back the drug scourge, cutting to TV footage of Justin Trudeau’s announcement that the government will be enthusiastically jumping into the cannabis business.

That situation leaves Anne out in the cold as her customers opt out of her services, despite her hard-won expertise delivering the right strain to her customers.

“I’m not Domino’s,” she complains to corporate client Brent (Dion Johnstone). “I’m like a tailor. I know my shit and I cut to fit.”

Even Anne’s own grandmother (Marcia Bennett) is no longer interested in purchasing from Anne. Her granddaughter, after all, does not award loyalty points to her customers.

“Shoppers is carrying it,” she tells Anne. “Those points add up.”

Alas, things start to look more and more dire for Anne, and the film duly takes a hard turn into drama for its second act as Anne becomes homeless and, in desperation, takes work with icy local crime queen Valerie (Natalie Brown) to maintain her lifestyle.

Before long, she realizes there are some aspects of the drug trade that could strain a girl’s conscience.

Intermittently, she gets advice from her father (Mochrie), playing it pretty straight as a man who gave up his own nine-to-five job at a bank to begin a career as a painter. At the same time, Anne finds an unlikely ally in Judy (Naomi Snieckus), a straitlaced, seasoned Ontario bureaucrat who helps Anne start a new life as a weed-store clerk, before the newly elected Doug Ford government throws that business into chaos.

Writer-director Sabbagh lets the material slip into bummersville in its second act, a move that puts the project at risk, given many a viewer might have assumed this would be a good film to be preceded by a few tokes.

Still, the movie is pretty much held together by Winnipeg-born Salgueiro (who may be best known as “Mean Nanny” in the CBC series Workin’ Moms). Salgueiro projects the toughness of her character, acknowledging that a woman in the weed-dispensing business can’t be a pushover, but she has an underlying tenderness that comes out, especially in her scenes with Mochrie and Bennett.

One can’t overlook Sabbagh’s achievement, though. This film was shot on a budget of just $10,000 and it looks better than many a more expensive Canfilm offering.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing