Please, After You: Comedy Asks, What If Canada Was Even Greater Than It Is?

By Chris Knight

Rating: C

Please, After You takes place in an alternate universe.

Sure, it looks like Toronto. But I live in Toronto the Good. This movie is set in Toronto the Frickin’ Awesome, a land of happy, well-adjusted immigrants that is devoid of all racism and any sign of strife.

The closest Amir Kahnamouee’s script comes on both fronts is when the neighbour to our protagonist threatens to lodge a complaint against his immigrant-filled boarding house. When the man is reminded that he himself was born in India, he huffs: “That was a long time ago!” That’s also one of the best delivered lines in the movie, and there are others. If nothing else, Please, After You is good for a few chuckles.

But my, what an overly cheery milieu in which it takes place! I don’t demand that all movies be dark and dreary, but just as they ought to obey the laws of physics, one expects them to take a stab at presenting realistic social norms.

Anyway, if you can overlook that valley, the film is an amusing romp. Sammy Azero stars as Ali, an Iranian-born engineer who would like to get a good job, an apartment, and a girlfriend (maybe that cute woman who parks at the lot he attends), get married, have kids and be the “best Canadian possible.” How do I know all this? He has it written down in a little book that he carries with him. This movie might also have been called Convenient, Eh?

Unfortunately, his little book doesn’t say “pick up cousin Omid from the airport.” But that’s what he has to do when Omid (Neema Nazeri) arrives hoping to claim refugee status, on the run after somehow accidentally participating in an anti-government march back in Iran.

Omid is a sweetheart, but he’s very dim. I lost track of how many times he had to be reminded that six million rial, while it sounds impressive, is only worth about $200 Canadian. He also manages to inadvertently sabotage Ali’s job opportunities, romantic possibilities, and financial stability. On the plus side, he learns that curling is an actual sport and not, as he first thought, team housekeeping on ice.

The movie, from first-time feature director Rob Michaels, claims to be “inspired by true stories (mostly),” and I’ve no doubt that the writer, himself an Iranian Canadian, dug deep into his personal store of knowledge, while sanding off some of the rougher and more depressing elements that bedevil every life.

But I would have welcomed a little more sourness and grit in the mix, and one fewer speech about how Canada is an amazing democracy in which to live. Then again, perhaps the film is a casualty of our times.

We’re living through a very pro-Canadian period, bombarded with reminders of how great it is to be here. Please, After You, which had its premiere almost a year and a half ago at the Whistler Film Festival, was just a little ahead of that curve.

Please, After You. Directed by Rob Michaels. Starring Sammy Azero, Neema Nazeri, and Julie Nolke. In theatres May 11.