Educational Media Reviews Online

Thin Ice is the companion film to New Yorker illustrator and satirist Bruce McCall's memoir, Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Canada (American title: Thin Ice: Saved by the American Dream). It's a strange film, both entertaining, provoking and, ultimately unsatisfying. The film is both a homage to McCall's work and wit, and an examination of the man himself. It alternates between hilarious, over the top montages describing McCall's early life, interviews with various people (including Steve Martin and David Remnick) he has worked with in New York, and some direct interviews with the artist and his daughter. The montages are wonderful, almost worth the price of admission themselves, but the rest of the material is not terribly enlightening. McCall muses on his tough childhood, with an alcoholic mother, a tyrannical father and several unnamed, un-described siblings. His take on his parents is both resentful and affectionate, and it would seem that he feels their influence is almost as present and conscious now as it was 50 years ago.

McCall's experience of Canada (he grew up in Small Town Southern Ontario and Toronto the Good) as a dull, grey, place with limited opportunities is sure to resonate with anyone who ever yearned for the bright lights, and his misery eventually took him to New York, where, in a process un-described by the film, he became a successful artist and writer at the New Yorker and Vanity Fair. The film follows him thorough the preparations and opening of his first major gallery show in New York, which he approaches with a typically Canadian attitude of apologetic anxiety - no matter how far you go some things will never leave you.

The film is enjoyable, and for those who know McCall's work it adds an extra dimension to their appreciation of it. However it is difficult to determine the audience for this film. In Canada, because the National Film Board of Canada is a federally subsidized cultural body, the film sells for a fairly reasonable $CDN 39.95, which would make it a suitable addition to any collection, public or academic dealing with the Arts or Canadian Studies. In the U.S, because of distribution agreements, this film sells for a whopping $US 285.00 which makes it very difficult to recommend to any but the most rabid fan. Recommended with reservations.

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