C.R.A.Z.Y. - Mobile Edition

Movie Reviews
C.R.A.Z.Y.
By Hervé St.Louis
June 17, 2005 - 18:52

Starring: Michel Côté, Marc-André Grondin, Danielle Proulx, SébastienBlouin, Pierre-Luc Brillant, Émile Vallée, Mariloup Wolfe, Jean-Louis Roux, Francis Ducharme, Alex Gravel, Hélène Grégoire, Johanne Lebrun, Maxime Tremblay, Jean-Marc Vallée
Directed by: Jean-Marc Vallée
Produced by: Pierre Even, Jean-Marc Vallée Les Films TVA

C.R.A.Z.Y.
C.R.A.Z.Y. is a new Canadian film about five brothers growing up in the 1960s, the 1970s and the early 1980s. Each brother has a personality quirk of his own. There’s Christian the nerd, Raymond, the rebel, Antoine, the athlete, Zack, the gay artist, and Yvan, the chubby kid brother. Conflict is brewing with Zack, his brothers and their father, as the former discovers his sexual orientation. Will the family survive?

This movie was impressive. It mixed old French Canadian Catholicism and superstitions with forward ideas and the progress that characterized this period in Quebec history. The director centred the focus of the movie principally on Zack, making all of his brothers, save for Raymond, plot devices. The relationship with his father was captivating. Unfortunately, the director thought that he had to kill a character to introduce a climax. It was unnecessary and seemed forced.

Visually, this film doesn’t use much of the traditional cinematography from Quebec. It looks as modern and well edited as any Hollywood blockbuster. Discreet colour filters decorate the sequences making it a film with beautiful imagery. Many special effects were used to make us see Zack’s imaginary world. The soundtrack includes period pieces starring Patsy Kline’s Crazy all the way to David Bowie’s Ground Control To Major Tom.