Hollywood’s decision to make Canada the home of its numerous productions for monetary causes seems fathomable, but apparently the sort of effect that has had on Canadian film board’s own trajectory doesn’t. As Toronto-based critic Liam Lacey recently reported, TeleFilm Canada has now decided to channel its support towards more "commercially viable" projects, and has more or less delivered an ultimatum to the likes of David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan and others to get in line with their new policies or lose funding. (No, it’s not a coincidence that Cronenberg chose to sign on with an American company for A History of Violence (2005), while Egoyan’s decidedly more marketable Where the Truth Lies (2005) is a Canada/U.K. co-production.) Unfortunately, Canadian bureaus want to compete with our films by making films that look like ours, something that has met with disbelief within the film community. A key member of which is Don McKellar, a multi-faceted prodigy who’s been a part of many key projects in recent years. His debut feature as a filmmaker came with Last Night (1998), a brilliantly staged apocalyptic drama I remember much more vividly than War of the Worlds (2005), which I watched just a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, McKellar’s second film, Childstar, comparably seems to be a more commercially calculated effort, and it suffers for being so even though the reasons for that are quite obvious.

McKellar, also an accomplished actor, plays Rick who, quite ironically perhaps, is a struggling filmmaker working part-time as a limo driver. He comes across an arrogant and obnoxious American "childstar" named Taylor Brandon Burns (Mark Rendall), who’s come with his mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to Toronto to shoot his latest vehicle. Rick gets involved with Taylor through the mother who herself is a bit lost, yet fails to admit it. McKellar’s initial set-up seems to be a Hollywood satire, but the film is too tame to be taken seriously, and at times it even falls into its own traps. Seeking freedom, Taylor eventually runs off with an aspiring actress/model who also happens to be a hooker (with a heart of gold, of course), and Rick’s job becomes to find the kid which makes him realize the true nature of the people that surround Taylor. Overall, the film is briskly-paced and handsomely-shot, but it doesn’t have an original point-of-view to offer, and perhaps it isn’t much better than these sorts of films that play on kiddie channels. McKellar does provide a bit of dry humor through his performance; although, he would’ve been better off basing the film on Jason Leigh’s character, which was ripe enough to be explored. Childstar has its moments, but they’re too few and far between for it to be considered a success.


Grade: C