'The Grand Seduction' review: Comic travelogue

By MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICEJune 12, 2014

Small, remote town pulls every trick in the book to land a much-needed town doctor. The locals are colorful and quirky; the new doc, a Big Medicine cynic. Maybe he's a New Yorker, as he was on TV's "Northern Exposure."

Or maybe he's French Canadian. That's the spin in "The Grand Seduction," a formula comedy that benefits from a winning cast and a heightened sexual twist to its "We need a doc to survive as a town" message.

Tickle Cove was once a thriving Newfoundland fishing village. But now, the cod and most of the young people have gone. Old codger Murray (a delightful Brendan Gleeson) takes the village by the horns to make one last ditch attempt to land a dubious "petrochemical byproduct reprocessing plant." But such a project needs people to work it, as well as a town with a doctor.

Fortune smiles on the town when a fast-talking, newly licensed plastic surgeon (Taylor Kitsch) passes through the airport in St. John's fresh from a Caribbean cricket match -- with a baggie of cocaine. The doc is forced to spend a month in Tickle Cove to avoid an arrest.

The villagers research the doctor, spy on him and listen in on his phone calls. He loves cricket? They'll fake a cricket match and pretend to be fans. He likes cocaine? "We're down with it," brags Murray. Murray even cajoles the pretty postmistress (Liane Balaban) to flirt with the doctor. She's not having it, or him.

It's more twee than madcap, kind of a less amusing Canadian "Waking Ned Devine." Don McKellar has directed a 90-minute movie buried inside one that's nearly two hours.

"The Grand Seduction" is, like Tickle Cove itself, a bit of an oversell. But Gleeson, Gordon Pinsent as his grizzled pal and Kitsch make this a diverting comic travelogue for anybody who misses "Northern Exposure" but has no intention of moving to Alaska -- or Newfoundland.