Wow, what a beautifully realised film this one is, it is close to being the perfect small movie. It comes as no surprise that it outsold such movies as LOTR and Matrix on its home turf, and has picked up a few awards. Most of the people I watched it with seemed to be older people (as were most of the people in the movie): judging by the amount of belly laughter, they really enjoyed it. I know I did.

The movie was very Northern Exposurish in its story but imbued with the spirit of Waking Ned Devine. Reviewers far more familiar with Ealing comedies than I see it is a transplanted Ealing Comedy. Quite a transplant! It is set in a tiny fishing village of 120 people on an island off the coast of Quebec (Harrington Harbour) to which access is first by ferry and then fishing boat. Fishing has dried up, so to help get the inhabitants off welfare, they try to get a plastic container factory started. As you do. To do that, they need a doctor, but no doctor would willingly go there - they prove that by sending out a letter to every doctor in Quebec. But then its their lucky day - an Islander is a policeman in Montreal and just happens to bust a doctor for carrying drugs: he informally sentnces the doctor to a month back home.

Of course, the islanders are all keen to make him stay, thus the "seducing" of Doctor Lewis. They miss the truly obvious ploy (setting a beautiful woman to woo him, and man is Lucie Laurier a beautiful woman (unfortunately, she is nude in the only good photos I have found of her, its very sad). They think that setting up a cricket match for his enjoyment (despite the fact that none of them had ever heard of the game - that's almost enough to make it paradise itself - so that when the good doctor turns up, they're in the embarrassing position of having a fully equipped cricket team with no clues as to how to play), dropping random bits of money for him to find and bugging his telephone so they can find out what he likes and supply it (again, their ignorance gets in the way when they don't know what beef stroganoff is, leading to the village cook being asked to make beef bugger off) will do the trick. Oh, and then there's the fishing, which leads to them having to explain to Dr Lewis how he came to catch a dead frozen fish (put on his line by a scuba diver, since he was so bad at fishing).