TOE OF THE WEEK (updated Mondays... usually)

"Toe Canada" (sung to "Oh Canada")
Toe Factor: 10

I'm glad that NAFTA included Canada... that way this beauty can enter the country without paying a Toeriff. It's about time Canada started stepping up their game... they'll have to produce a lot more of these to make up for sending us Tom Green, who is so bad that he almost negates Canada's previous benevolence by sending us Mike Myers and Jim Carrey. I think the reason that Canada produces so many comedians on a per capita basis is that it's so cold up there that (a) comedy serves as a distraction and defense mechanism during youth and (b) once you leave you're so f**king happy to be warm that you're always upbeat. This might be Miss Canada, but when she gets that playboy contract and moves somewhere warmer she probably wont 'miss canada'. During some of the coverage this week of the Reagan funeral I heard Brit Hume of Fox News asking Brian Mulroney about his unsuccessful 1987 attempt to officially rename Toronto to "Toe-ronto". A shame... he was ahead of his time.

Walking Tall
Toe Rating:

This movie works because it doesn't take itself seriously. At times it is even laugh-out-loud-funny. I don't think the makers were going for laugh-out-loud funny but I also get the sense that it wouldn't bother them. The Rock is charismatic and obviously a fairly smart person and probably capable of some range, and more than adept at the action scenes. There is one scene with a girl in her bra and underwear participating in a ten minute machinegun fight...i cannot believe that this overt combination of winning elements isn't a staple of these types of films...it's Maxim magazine meets the Terminator. The bad guy is the poor man's Ray Liotta but passable. The movie seems to last about 30 minutes and at times has the feel of a very polished and expensively-produced Dukes of Hazzard episode: in a period of just days the main character leaves the army, comes home, gets into a brawl where he sustains serious injuries, rehabs himself, becomes a vigilante, gets put on trial, defends himself at the trial and prevails, runs for sheriff, gets elected, cracks down on the bad guys and cleans up his town. But the Rock is so likeable that you don't really care that at the trial he still is wearing the stitches from the fight and that the timeline is hopelessly implausible. The ending, where the town's mill is put back into operation, is funny in a way as well...a guy carrying a huge stick reversing the entire global trend of production moving to low labor-cost nations. If the Rock can reverse the 'adverse impact' of NAFTA, free trade and macroeconomics just think what John Rambo could have done without the flashbacks and Brian Dennehy on his ass.