I think the primary sell for the movie is nostalgia. Every Canadian who went to school in the 1980s will recognize the no smoking assemblies, and hockey and religion seeping into everything that happens. Dean is a hockey star, beloved at school, and tolerates his ultra-religious mother and hockey coach dad. They tell us early on that Dean and his sister were adopted. For now that remains just a nugget.
The problem with a movie like this selling itself on nostalgia is that everyone old enough to remember 1989 is too mature for a crass comedy with way too many dick jokes and nothing happening. He’s on his way to becoming a rock star but here he’s just a high school hockey player. The movie needs something more to it. And that’s the next problem. Eventually, approximately half way into the movie, it’s revealed that Dean and his sister have Metis roots and were “adopted” by way of the government giving them to white parents.
That’s a story. It’s interesting and has something important to say. And the movie decided not to do anything further with it. The only good idea the movie has gets buried so they can turn this into an action comedy, complete with car chases on dirt roads and bus chases on dirt roads. They introduced two moments of how prevalent racism was in school at the time, and then just dropped it.
Deaner ’89 is a stupid movie filled with immature jokes that some of us might have found funny in 1989 but not now. And just to really piss of its audience decides not to bother shedding light on the extreme racism of the Canadian government that happened just a few short decades ago because dick jokes are more important.
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