THE STEPS
CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA D: Andrew Currie. Canada. 98 min. Sep 14, 10:15 pm Scotiabank 11 Sep 17, 9 pm Scotiabank 8. See listings. Rating: N
The Steps has one great line and one great performance, and it’s remarkable that those two things are even detectable in this awful comedy about a blended family squabbling through a snowy weekend at a lake house in Parry Sound.
A talented cast (including Jason Ritter, James Brolin, Christine Lahti, Kate Corbett, Vinay Virmani and Naomi Snieckus) struggles to breathe life into writer Robyn Harding’s stock characters and generic conflicts, and it’s all directed so indifferently by Currie (Fido) that it’s unclear whether Brolin and Ritter were even in the same room for their big father-son scene.
Steven McCarthy (whose very good short film O Negative is also playing the festival) is terrific as the family fuck-up, a resentful ex-rocker who really should have been the film’s focal character. None of this is his fault.
