One of the more successful Canadian comedy TV shows to come around in some time, The Trailer Park Boys has become a bit of a sensation in its homeland and has developed a fairly strong cult following south of the border as well. With the show having proven quite successful, it wasn't surprising to hear that a feature film was in the works, and Screen Media Films has seen fit to give that film a stateside release on DVD.

The movie (and the series it was based on) follows the misadventures of three friends who all live in the same Nova Scotia trailer park - a bumbling pompadour wearing small time pot farmer named Ricky (Robb Wells), his buff but rather dim pal Julian (John Paul Tremblay), and the strange bespectacled and kitten obsessed Bubbles (Mike Smith). The park is watched over in Gestapo like fashion by an alcoholic former cop named Jim Lahey (John Dunsworth) and his perpetually shirtless, hamburger-eating right hand man, Randy (Patrick Roach).

When the film begins, Ricky and Julian have just been let out of the bighouse where they had been doing hard time and where Ricky became the star goalie of the inmates street hockey team. They return to the park where they live and meet up with Bubbles and Ricky soon learns that his on again/off again girlfriend (and the mother of his child), Lucy (Lucy Decoutere), has gotten breast implants, shacked up with a lesbian lover, and started stripping at the local 'gentleman's club' run by a meathead named Sonny (former Headstones vocalist Hugh Dillon, star of Hardcore Logo). Ricky is none too happy about this and so he decides to prove to Lucy that he's more than just a slacker by planning 'The Big Dirty' - that being one last big time crime that'll set he and his pals up for life. Julian finds the perfect opportunity when he takes a stripper named Wanda (Nicole Hiltz) to the movies and spies a massive machine filled with 'loonies and twoonies' (one and two dollar coins for those of you who don't speak Canadian). The boys put into motion the first steps of their master plan but of course, there are more than a few little problems that creep up along the way, including interference from Sonny, Lahey, and some of Halifax's finest police officers (played by Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip and Alex Lifeson of Rush).

Gleefully crass and unapologetically non-PC, The Trailer Park Boys: The Movie is a uniquely Canadian comedy that wears its heritage proudly on its sleeve. While a couple of the jokes might be lost on US viewers unfamiliar with the cult of Tim Horton's or the importance of hockey in Canadian society, for the most part the film transcends borders with ease ensuring that this is a movie that will prove just as funny to Canadians as it will to anyone else in the world. The drug and alcohol laced humor works well because the characters are fleshed out enough and developed enough that it suits them. It never feels like it's being forced, rather, it seem a natural extension of the key players in the movie.

Shot faux-documentary style in spots and as a feature in others, it's not the most visually impressive film but it doesn't need to be nor does it aspire to be. The movie is more concerned with its pace and its comedic timing than with cinematography but it looks good enough and it does contain a few surprisingly interesting shots that are used to good effect when they're called upon. The film's soundtrack, made up of Canadian rock acts, works very well, particularly the use of The Tragically Hips bittersweet Bobcaygeon playing over the closing credits.

While the movie doesn't necessarily jive with some of the continuity established in the long running television show, it's easily forgivable. The humor is very definitely in the same vein and this self contained story ensures that you don't need to be in the least bit familiar with the series to enjoy the film, making this a good 'gateway drug' to enjoying the episodic adventures of the characters seen here. The surprisingly sweet ending isn't sappy or overdone; in fact it wraps everything up quite nicely and (not surprisingly) leaves room for another film down the road

Video:

The 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen picture on the DVD sent for review contains a 'for screening purposes only' bug that appears periodically throughout playback resulting in a disc that is not representative of final retail product. Because of that, no score will be given to the video quality of this release. If this is close to what the finished disc is going to look like, however, there aren't any serious problems to complain about. A bit of grain and a speck or two appears on the print and there's some minor edge enhancement but color reproduction is strong and there aren't any compression artifacts.