Cynical Cinema

          “Cruising Bar” is a French Canadian movie from 1989 that comes out on DVD tomorrow, June 10th, from Alliance Films.  It’s a film by Robert Menard that stars Michel Cote in four different roles.  All four characters are heading out to the bars in an attempt to pick up women.  One is a self-centred obnoxious yuppie named Charles, one is an annoying stereotypical nerd named George, another is an irritating sleazy married auto-parts dealer named Gerry, and the last is a mulletted junkie loser named Patrick who is broken-hearted over his breakup with his girlfriend.  So…there are the four main characters - Patrick, Gerry, George and Charles.  These are the names that appear on the English subtitles.  However, the names the characters are given on-screen, in French, are Jean-Jacques, Gerard, Patrice and Serge.  Do the subtitle people really think that English audiences can’t understand French names? 

          Apparently, no.  Even the title, “Cruising Bar”, gets a bizarre translation into English on the DVD box - why not call it “Cruising Bar” in English as well?  It’s already an English title.  But it gets “translated” to “Meet Market”.  Which is odd, but not as odd as the subtitles themselves.  Not only are the actual names of the characters changed, so is virtually everything else.  The yuppie snob meets a woman who says quite clearly (in French) that her name is Louise.  It shows up on the screen as “Julie”.  A bartender offers him an O’Keefe.  The screen says Coors Light.  A woman tells him she runs 160 kilometres a day, to see if he’s paying attention.  The screen says 90.  Fifteen years becomes sixteen years.  And the actual French dialogue is quite a bit different than the English subtitles, and if you understand French, you’re way better off switching them off altogether.  It’s like someone created the words on the screen with the sound off.  It’s two different movies. 

          As the movie goes on, we see the yuppie being obnoxiously yuppie, the nerdy guy being irritatingly nerdy, the sleazy married guy being over-the-top in his sleaziness and his married life, and the junkie being an annoyingly desperate loser.  It’s great that Michel Cote can play all four characters so convincingly (it really did take me a long time to realize it was the same actor in all four roles), but they are all so annoying that it grates.  Do they really have to ALL be such obnoxious over-the-top caricatures?  And really, although there are four stories going on at the same time, we really don’t care at all about any of them, because we don’t like any of the characters.  The yuppie goes to a snob bar.  The nerd goes to a punk bar (remember, this movie was made in 1989 - 1989 “punk” was a cartoon in itself).  The sleazy guy hits a sleazy low-rent motel bar, and the junkie with a mullet goes to a regular disco. 

          The only story that’s compelling even a bit is that of the poor, put-upon nerd who just can’t get it right as he moves from the punk bar to a country bar where they won’t let him in.  But even the bars are stereotyped as badly as the characters.  He ends up in a gay bar, and the stereotypes come flying out.  One thing I absolutely hate in movies is the idea that a guy who gets turned down by even the ugliest women in the world, because of his appearance and personality, will be hit on by gay guys.  Like the idea is that gay guys will try to sleep with absolutely anything where women would never go.  Don’t gay guys have standards too?  Not only that, but the most offensive stereotype shows up at the end, when the big, tough, muscled biker gay guy shows up, and chases the nerd around the room, presumably to have sex with him against his will.  And the big “payoff”?  The grand finale, the punch line of the movie?  Gay rape.  Get it?  Hahaha, he isn’t even gay! 

          But the night ends badly for everyone.  Gerard’s wife shows up (in disguise) at the bar he’s cruising, and he unwittingly picks her up and takes her to the room he’s rented for the night.  Again…hahaha.  Only this time the camera doesn’t show us, the viewer, her face ever.  Are we to believe that we, the people watching, would recognize her, while her own husband wouldn’t?  At any rate, there isn’t much to recommend this film.  It’s Canadian, Michel Cote flexes several of his acting muscles, and…there is a guy with a terrific Joe Dirt mullet.  Other than that, I got nothing.