*/****
starring Douglas Smith, Donal Logue, Vivica A. Fox, Alberta Watson
screenplay by Jonathan Sobol and Robert DeLeskie
directed by Michael Mabbott
by Bill Chambers This Canuck Rushmore really got on my nerves. The movie makes a crucial miscalculation in the early going by introducing its puny teenaged hero, Duane Balfour (Douglas Smith), in revenge mode: Given that we already know Duane's girlfriend (Jane McGregor) is way out of his league, he would seem to have pre-emptively settled any scores he could possibly have with the Most Popular Kid in School (porcine Nicholas Carella, as miscast as Haylie Duff was as the distaff equivalent in Napoleon Dynamite), and so this retribution without an onscreen context looks petty. Hoping to redeem the family name (his father, a prophet of doom, was killed in a Ruby Ridge scenario), Duane eventually decides to run for mayor, but he's a Quixote surrounded by pragmatists; when Duane finally throws in the towel, his entire support system–family, friends, teachers–breathes a sigh of relief. (Anything less would be frankly unCanadian.) Small problem: director Michael Mabbott isn't media-savvy (while guesting on a radio show, Duane doesn't wear headphones; an asshole news reporter's microphone is never plugged into anything; etc.). Big problem: Citizen Duane is an underdog/coming-of-age comedy that's neither funny nor poignant nor ingratiating. PROGRAMME: Contemporary World Cinema
