Movie Reviews!

Curling is one place where you can say "we're going to review every full-length Curling movie ever made" and get it out of the way with a single post.

As far as I've been able to find, Men with Brooms is the only full-length Curling movie.  (update: watch it on YouTube)

It's the story of a rink from a small town in Canada.  They were on their way to the Golden Broom when their Skip, Chris, burned a rock -- and didn't call it.

As a result, he walked away from Curling, left town, left his fiancee at the altar.  Which, as you become more familiar with Curling, and Curling culture, makes perfect sense.

Ten years later, their coach passes away (heart attack while recovering their set of Curling stones from the nearby lake), and his final wish is for the Cutter rink to reunite, make it to the Golden Broom, and put a stone (containing his cremated remains) on the button.

For those of us to the south of the World's Longest One-way Mirror (the U.S.-Canadian border) some of the humor is a little bit hard to follow.  If you don't get why Beavers keep appearing in strange spots throughout the movie, Google for it.

Cutter's dad steps in to coach, since the late Donald Foley is in the previously mentioned Curling stone and therefore unavailable.  The decidedly-odd Gordon Foley is played by Leslie Nielsen.

Then there is the love/hate triangle between Cutter, and the two Foley daughters -- with Julie, the fiance-turned-astronaut going into space, and Amy, the alcoholic single-mom getting the guy.

Okay, some of the curling is a little unrealistic -- to the extreme. 

But the writing is, at times, brilliant, even for Americans who don't get all of the in-jokes.  The definitve Curling movie quote:

It's not just a rock.  It's forty-two pounds of polished granite, with a beveled underbelly and a handle a human being can hold.  Okay, so in and of itself it looks like it has no practical purpose, but it's a repository of possibility.  And, when it's handled just right, it exacts a kind of poetry - as close to poetry as I ever want to get.  The way it moves.... Not once, in everything I've done, have I ever felt the same wonder and humanity as when I'm playing the game of curling.

... and you know, that makes perfect sense.

Now, all I need to do is get past the rude limericks that characterize my play, and push toward Haiku and Sonnets.

Then again, it might be best to just concentrate on proper delivery and good sweeping for the next few games.