When the President of the United States is rating low in the opinion polls he is talked into raising his popularity by attempting to start a cold war against Canada.
In Niagara Falls a local sheriff Bud Boomer is about to become key to everything that is happening, after preventing a suicide at the falls he then goes on to saving the President from an assassination attempt. From this moment everything is about to change for the President as he is given some rather strange information about starting a war with another country.
It isn’t long until US TV channels suddenly have anti-Canada propaganda which Boomer believes completely. He quickly decides to prepare for war and everything will then go a little bit crazy. I thought the way that the media could quickly influence people was actually a very intersting aspect of the film, given this was released 30 years ago and that type of propaganda still occurs, but now it is constantly through the internet and smart phones. Highlighting that things do not really change all that much, the only big change is the target.
Overall though the film isn’t exactly all that funny, even the moments that should have been just fell a little bit short. The cast was probably the main reason I decided to give it a try and that over the years I keep finding John Candy films that I had not seen and as it turns out this one was his final theatrical feature film.
I assumed that you chose this because our new US President keeps saying he is going to annex Canada…yes, he’s a fool – but I also remember that this wasn’t really funny…a farce is tough to pull off and usually ends up being far too smug…always enjoy reading your reviews…
I guess the timing was very strange, although that could well have been Amazon pushing the film up the list for people to watch? I cannot resist John Candy, I guess the funniest part was that he was willing to bad mouth his own country of Canada.
That’s a great point – Amazon pushed it because of the news! Too bad it wasn’t better…