Comedy pours syrup with heavy hand

  • By Robert Horton / Herald Movie Critic
  • Thursday, August 19, 2004 9:00pm
  • LifeGo-See-Do

It was a gigantic hit in Canada, and a similar audience will surely embrace it in the States. “Seducing Doctor Lewis” is a must for folks who loved “Waking Ned Devine” and “Chocolat.”

For the rest of us, it will taste like a bowl full of sugar, with maple syrup ladled on top. This is another of those movies about a small, winsome town in which all the inhabitants are unfailingly adorable, despite their supposed economic struggles.

The town is Sainte-Marie-La-Mauderne, which is anything but modern. Perched on the Quebec coast, where the fishing grounds have dried up and left the townsfolk on welfare, it’s a dying place.

The town elders hatch a scheme to attract a plastics factory, but the corporation needs a doctor living in the vicinity. Sainte-Marie doesn’t have a sawbones, but they cajole and finagle their way into getting one to spend a month in town.

They plot to present the town as so idyllic and perfect, the doctor will choose to stay. The first job in this seduction: field a cricket team. The doctor loves cricket. Therefore, the locals now love cricket, even though they do not know how to play.

The main players in this masquerade are the new mayor, played by the rascally Raymond Bouchard, and the doctor, a sophisticated but gullible type, played by David Boutin. Most of the other actors do the grizzled-local-eccentric routine, although Benoit Briere has some funny moments as a very sensitive bank manager.

The real star is the location. The movie was shot on a remote Quebec island, Harrington Harbor, population 300. It’s a truly amazing-looking place, with houses balanced on rocky hillsides and boardwalks snaking through town.

Director Jean-Francois Pouliot, a veteran of TV commercials, has a good eye, but he’s too eager to sell the cuteness of the story. This movie needs a little dash of brine to put it in the “Local Hero” category, or even “Northern Exposure,” with its city doctor stranded in a small town. But it settles for the cute.

Like any sitcom, it depends on people doing really elaborate, illogical things, when by using logic they could have avoided most of their problems. You could argue that people are illogical – and no question about it, we are. But that doesn’t maybe “Seducing Doctor Lewis” any less exasperating to watch.

“Seducing Doctor Lewis” HH

Syrupy: A French-Canadian seacoast town tries to convince a visiting doctor to stay in their depressed community, using elaborate ruses. This cutesy echo of “Waking Ned Devine” is like a bowl of sugar topped with maple syrup. (In French, with English subtitles.)

Rated: Not rated; probably PG for subject matter.

Now showing: tk

“Seducing Doctor Lewis” HH

Syrupy: A French-Canadian seacoast town tries to convince a visiting doctor to stay in their depressed community, using elaborate ruses. This cutesy echo of “Waking Ned Devine” is like a bowl of sugar topped with maple syrup. (In French, with English subtitles.)

Rated: Not rated; probably PG for subject matter.

Now showing: Harvard Exit.

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