CBC movie imaginitive, fun… and incomplete

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This article was published 11/02/2012 (5323 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Here’s the thing about sketches: they tend to be, well, sketchy.

Sketches, by their nature, are often roughly drawn and lack definition; they can be colourful and cluttered with objects and characters, but they still seem incomplete, like a preliminary rendering of an idea that might someday be turned into a finished product.

And so it is with the CBC movie Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, an ambitious and uniquely imaginative adaptation that celebrates the 100th anniversary of author/humourist Stephen Leacock’s quintessentially Canadian novel. As the title suggests, watching this made-for-TV movie is a bit like flipping through a sketchbook — there are eye-catching moments and brief, amusing passages throughout, but this decidedly flimsy effort lacks anything resembling the sort of cohesive, logical narrative that most scripted dramas possess.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on CBC, opens with one of the most inspired computer-generated sequences you’ll ever see in a movie — a couple of young boys are riding bareback on a draught horse across an open tall-grass field when suddenly, out of nowhere, a town appears, building by building, in pop-up-book fashion.

As it happens, the story’s narrator — Gordon Pinsent in the guise of an elderly Leacock looking back on his rural-Ontario upbringing — sets the scene: “I don’t know whether you know Mariposa; no matter if you don’t — if you know Canada at all, you know at least a dozen towns just like it.”

We quickly learn that one of the boys aboard the big white horse is young Stephen Leacock (played by Owen Best), who, with his brother, has been dispatched to town to retrieve their father, yet again, from the local alehouse. The storyline that follows has to do with dad Peter’s (Rick Roberts) brother, E.P. (Patrick McKenna), dropping in for a visit before heading west to Winnipeg in search of new-frontier riches. The visit produces two outcomes — the elder Leacock, desperate for cash and lacking in job-seeking motivation, agrees to accompany his brother on the Prairie-bound journey, and Stephen’s mother, Agnes (Jill Hennessy), decides to mount a campaign against the local innkeeper for providing the after-hours liquor that has turned her husband into a shiftless drunk.

Neither thread is followed in too much detail, however, as Sunshine Sketches flits hither and yon among various short-subject explorations, including an ill-fated cruise aboard the lake steamer Mariposa Belle, a couple of drop-ins at the local schoolhouse and hotel owner Josh Smith’s (Donal Logue) attempt to strike up a mutually beneficial friendship with Stephen at the same time the boy’s mother is trying to get the local liquor commission to shut down his saloon.

How they turn out matters little — it’s the vivid colour and rough-sketched whimsy of the individual moments that give this collection of sketches its limited appeal. Well, that and the way Sunshine Sketches very quickly becomes a dizzyingly paced game of spot-the-Canadian-TV-star — it’s pretty safe to say that no single Canuck-TV production has ever amassed a roster of homegrown acting talent to match what this one has.

In addition to the familiar names already mentioned, Sunshine Sketches also gives screen time (mostly in small doses) to Colin Mochrie and wife Debra McGrath, Peter Keleghan and spouse Leah Pinsent, Caroline Rhea, Ron James, Eric Peterson, Sean Cullen and even actor/singer Keshia Chanté, who appears out of nowhere during the steamboat-focused storyline and contributes a brief and wildly out-of-context rendition of Burton Cummings’ solo hit I’m Scared.

It’s probably the most gimmicky moment in a movie that seems much more concerned with gags, gimmicks and stunt casting than with offering its viewers a satisfyingly complete yarn.

That doesn’t mean this Little Town isn’t fun. It just means that it’s very, well, you know… sketchy.

— — —

Walking Dead, or Running Dead?: When it returns for the last half of its second season (Sunday at 8 p.m., AMC), TV’s surprise-hit zombiefest will feature more than a few re-animated corpses that have found a second lumbering-gait gear.

Or so said the producers of The Walking Dead last month during AMC’s portion of the U.S. networks’ semi-annual press tour in Los Angeles. When questioned about an apparent increase in the speed at which the series’ titular “walkers” pursue their prey, the folks who make the show offered a couple of explanations.

“The way we look at it is that the speed with which you turn into a zombie has to do with your physical health at the time of death,” said executive producer Robert Kirkman, who’s also the creator of the comic-book series that inspired the TV show. “So it’s variable — sometimes they’re faster, sometimes they’re slower; it’s all dependent on the life of the zombie, how long it’s been dead, and what kind of condition it’s in.”

Special-effects expert Greg Nicotero added that there’s something of a shark-like feeding-frenzy element to the way the zombies behave.

“When the walkers sort of get whipped into a frenzy by the idea that there’s a meal pretty close by, they become more animated…. It’s sort of like an animal that goes on the hunt, and these bursts of energy make a lot of sense when there’s a meal close by.”

So there you have it. Budget your zombie-fleeing energy accordingly.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

TV REVIEW

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

Starring Jill Hennessy, Donal Logue, Colin Mochrie, Peter Keleghan and Gordon Pinsent

Sunday at 8 p.m.

CBC

2 1/2 stars out of 5