Sunday, April 01, 2007

I'm watching La Grande Séduction, an utterly charming Québecois movie about a small town that must persuade a doctor to come and stay in order to get a factory that will save them from oblivion.

It's the sort of movie that isn't a brilliantly new idea, but is done with heart and charm and lovely characters. Québec seems to make a lot of successful movies like these. You couldn't accuse Les Boys of being a particularly original sports movie. Horloge Biologique showed three guys freaking out about their girlfriends' fertility -- nothing super new there. It's all in the execution. And the execution here is lovely.

But it's bugging me, O Hive Mind, that I can't remember the movie from the 80's where some Tom Hanks-like executive who works for some Gregory Peck-like rich guy is scouting a small town because he wants to buy it to build a factory there is planning to install some kind of factory that will destroy a small Scottish fishing town, and he comes, and the village charms him, and the magnate decides not to build the factory, and the exec decides to settle down in the town...?

UPDATE: Bill Cunningham nailed it: Local Hero, starring Burt Lancaster and Peter Riegert!

Labels: hive mind, watching movies

8:50 PM

4 Comments:

LOCAL HERO directed by Bill Forsyth and starring Peter Riegert as the "tom hanks like executive."

By  Cunningham, at 9:42 PM  

Or how about "Other People's Money" from 1991. It had similar elements. Including Gregory Peck.

By  Tom, at 12:51 AM  

Or how about Michael J Fox as a passing doctor charmed into staying at a small town in need of a physician in 1991's DOC HOLLYWOOD ?

By  Frank Carver, at 1:56 AM  

A plot form pretty much recyled last year in Pixar's CARS.

By  Stephen Gallagher, at 11:14 AM  

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