Spice It Up

Years ago, facing too many choices and several disappointments at the Toronto Fringe Festival, I swore I would never again watch a play about people writing a play. In the late ‘90s, that eliminated about 30 per cent of the Fringe lineup.

This low-budget Toronto production from co-directors Lev Lewis, Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas is the cinematic equivalent of just that, but I’m very glad I gave it a shot because it’s a lovely, funny story about thwarted artistic creativity. It’s a bit shaggy, but that’s just part of its charm.

Jennifer Hardy CK stars as Rene, a Ryerson film student whose class project is not going well. The movie-within-the-movie is about seven young women who impulsively sign up with the Canadian Forces after flunking out of high school.

Both narrative threads feature some bizarre, lowlevel Toronto cameos. Film critic Adam Nayman plays Rene’s pestiferous professor and gets to say the kinds of things critics dream of telling big-name filmmakers: “Even though it’s not that long, just make it seem less long.”

There’s also a wonky scene with director Matt Johnson (Operation Avalanche) playing a pervy passport photographer.

Spice It Up will no doubt resonate most strongly with those in the creative community — rest assured, you’ve never had anyone leave your film mid-screening with the excuse concocted by Rene’s next-door neighbour. But for anyone else it’s still an instructive look inside the process. Best of all it’s not that long, and I wouldn’t want it to seem any less so. ½

Spice It Up opens at the Lightbox in Toronto on Aug. 16.