THE COCKSURE LADS MOVIE (Murray Foster, Mike Ford). 96 minutes. Opens Friday (August 7). Rating: N
A comedy extrapolated from Moxy Früvous veterans Murray Foster and Mike Ford’s retro-themed British Invasion-themed gimmick band, The Cocksure Lads Movie opens as its eponymous rockers (now played by actual Englishmen Lyndon Ogbourne, Adam McNab and Luke Marty, plus Canadian ringer Ed Hillier) arrive in Toronto “to conquer America” – and break up almost immediately.
From there, they wander separately around Leslieville, flirting with women and experiencing the most minor of existential crises. Very little happens, and it’s crushingly inert.
It feels like writer-director Foster called in a lot of favours to get this made but never figured out how to fit his caricatured rockers into the more realistic setting of contemporary Toronto.
I assume the production couldn’t afford to recreate the 60s, where the Lads would make sense both aesthetically and in terms of their wide-eyed naïveté, but just pretending no one’s noticed they’re half a century out of step with the times isn’t enough.
