FUCK (Steve Anderson). 93 minutes. Opens Friday (December 1) at the Bloor. See Indie & Rep Cinemas, page 102. Rating: NN Rating: NN
There’s something laughably quaint about a film that sets out to examine the etymology and social significance of the English language’s most pervasive expletive.
Those four letters – spoken some 800 times in the film, in countless combinations, permutations and conjugations – are hardly indicative of the unravelling of society’s moral fabric, as many of the talking heads presented in this documentary suggest.
But every dutifully dull ultra-conservative argument made by fuddy-duddies like Michael Medved or Pat Boone (who actually uses his last name when he feels the need to swear) is countered by a fuck-friendly Billy Connolly, Ron Jeremy or Ice-T.
While this occasionally funny rhetorical tug-of-war is framed within the context of the free speech debate, it’s obvious Anderson has little that’s relevant or enlightening to say on the subject. He’s only too happy to engage in the juvenile exercise of luring someone famous into his 20-years-too-late debate, and you can imagine him giggling like a grade-schooler looking up curse words in the dictionary when he succeeds, as when Dan Rather declares fuck a “grand word.”
And when a bored-looking Drew Carey asks, “When are you guys going to make the ‘cunt’ documentary?” he has a point. Because when it comes to cursing, who gives a fuck?
