Seducing Dr. Lewis
Length: 1 hour, 48 minutes
Studio: Wellspring Media
Website: http://www.lagrandeseduction-lefilm.com/
Release Date: 1900-01-01
Cast: Raymond Bouchard, David Boutin, Benoît Brière, Lucie Laurier, Pierre Collin
Director: Jean-François Pouliot
Screenwriter: Ken Scott
WorkNameSort: Seducing Dr. Lewis
Our Rating: 2.50
This French-Canadian comedy is in the tradition of The Full Monty and Waking Ned Devine: films about average folk who get into some kind of fix because they need money. This time, the comical commoners are the inhabitants of a tiny former fishing village in Quebec where everyone seems to be on welfare. Their one hope of salvation: A company that manufactures plastic containers is considering building a factory on village property. But before it can go up, the town must have a regular full-time doctor. Through a set of complicated machinations, the town ends up with the services of young Dr. Lewis for exactly one month while the villagers hatch an elaborate scheme to “seduce” him into staying permanently. It’s not a bad premise, and there’s a chuckle here and there. But the movie is too faithful to the well-worn formula of mixing homegrown eccentricity with a slathering of sentiment, and it never really takes off.
This article appears in Dec 8-14, 2004.