muons This is a Canadian equivalent of a Disney movie with cartoonish characters and a paper-thin plot. With the sheer predictability of the story and the quality of jokes, its target audience seems more like pre-teens than adults. Except for the unemployment, nothing seems real in the remote, godforsaken Quebec village which serves as the setting. If lack of profanity, sex and violence is sufficient to qualify as a good movie then this is the one. However, with jokes that could be seen coming a mile away, this movie is a perfect example to problems with French comedies including their North American cousins.

George Parker "Seducing Doctor Lewis" tells of a French-Canadian fishing village which is on the dole and on the list of locations for a new factory. The latter would get the fishermen of the played out waters new jobs and off welfare, so the townspeople conspire to seduce a doctor to coming to their village with the hope he'll stay on as their resident physician. The result is a charming little comedy full of good natured and earnest characters and their inept attempts at deception and fraud which lead to the inevitable happily ever after fairy tale conclusion. Enjoyable, light hearted. mildly amusing family film fare, "Seducing Doctor Lewis" should appeal to anyone into Disneyesque films who can contend with subtitles. (B-)

daveb75 "La grande seduction" is not a bad film. In fact, it's a modestly good film. I laughed a lot during the screening, even though anyone could see where this plot is going, right from the start. And that storyline annoyed me a bit considering that I was constantly reminded of a Michael J. Fox comedy which has a very similar plot: "Doc Hollywood". I have never seen "...Hollywood" in it's totality by a lack of interest, but nonetheless, no viewer can ignore the resemblance. Still, the unique backdrop and setting, the colorful characters, and the non- pretentious nature of "La grande seduction", make this movie enjoyable. But it is not the masterpiece some pretend it is. It is well written, simply but skillfully directed, offers good performances by a great cast and can still make for good entertainment. But that is as far as it will go. And young director Pouliot never pretended he was making "8 1/2". He was aiming for a light comedy, and that is what you get. No more, no less.

Ralph Michael Stein Quebec has no ocean coastline but there are fishing villages on waters that have seen better days. In "Seducing Dr. Lewis" such a village is Francophone St. Marie-La-Mauderne, a tidy place where every able-bodied man who used to fish is on the dole and living, with their families, rather comfortably. Houses are neat and have stereo systems, late model TVs, microwaves and coffee makers. This movie could unwittingly start an exodus of unemployed Americans to our northern neighbor.The village seeks economic rejuvenation through the building of a plastics factory. Alas, the company's insurers require a resident physician and this place hasn't had a doc in a husky's age. No doc, no revitalizing plant.So they plot to get one, the leader of the cause being an elder named Germain Lesage (Raymond Bouchard). He's a clever guy - the only denizen who cashes two relief checks every month, one for himself and the other - made out to a dead guy - for himself too.A traffic violation encounter by a doctor possessing marijuana with a cop who once was the village's mayor gets Montreal plastic surgeon Christopher Lewis to sojourn with them for a month with the hope that he'll sign a five-year contract. Lewis is dewy-eyed David Boutin. Why a specialist who lives with a gal named Brigette (we never see her but her silky voice on the phone suggests he made a mistake leaving her in the big city) would want to spend a month as a G.P. in a godforsaken former fishing village isn't a director's carefully wrought mystery: it's a big hole in the story, a very unnecessary one.The villagers try to seduce Lewis by hook and by crook. Hook features most prominently a sham cricket team, Germain having somehow learned before his arrival that the medico is a fanatic follower of that sport. Crook is tapping his phone so as to learn more about him (anywhere in the U.S. that would be a felony. Not in Canada?).There's nothing unpredictable about the evolving and increasingly wild campaign to win the doctor over. What makes "Seducing Dr. Lewis" fun is the sprightly cast and the beautiful scenery. Boutin and Bouchard are fine in their roles. This is a welfare-dependent community as Disney would imagine it. So what.Will Dr. Lewis remain? What do you think?The director is Jean-Francois Pouliet who has a nice imagination but needs to learn to tidy up his stories. There's a difference between mystery and muddle.Subtitled, of course.8/10 (because I'm in a beneficent mood)