Deaner ’89 is a comedy with an identity crisis that holds it back from being funny or interesting, which in and of itself is an amusing problem to have considering that it’s about a character revolving around a similar situation. Unassured, scattered, and trying too hard to relive past glories while simultaneously failing to make viewers forget about everything that came before, Deaner ’89 is a messy vanity project that never settles on a satisfying hook on which to hang all of its tired jokes about metal heads, hosers, and givin’r.
The year is 1989 and Dean Murdoch (Paul Spence) looks like a fifty year old dude (thanks to a glandular issue), but is actually a teenager with a mouthful of braces. He lives in a small Manitoba steel town with his adoptive functional alcoholic dad (Will Sasso), jazzercise loving and satan fearing mom (Lauren Cochrane), and kind younger sister, Jen (Star Slade). Dean is a doofus, but he has a loyal girlfriend (Maddy Foley) and is on track to land a hockey scholarship. That all changes with the arrival of a mysterious trunk containing his late birth father’s personal effects. What he finds will open his eyes to a world of drugs, head banging, hard partying, and even his previously unknown Metis heritage.
If some of this sounds familiar, it’s because Spence has been down this road before. The character of Dean Murdoch previously appeared in the Fubar films and their follow-up television series. But the distributor and producers of Deaner ’89 (including, quite prominently in the opening credits, Spence’s own self-titled production company) have made it very, very clear (via multiple emails and statements) that this is the only time I can bring up that connection directly and mention those other works. This statement of intent looks like it’s coming from a sticky legal perspective (most likely tied to this), but it doesn’t help when explaining some of the reasons why Deaner ’89 doesn’t work. It’s always courting a comparison that it wants to piggy back on, while simultaneously trying to ignore its existence. It’s a film made to cash in on a legacy that’s also disgusted by everything that entails.
I guess it’s a good thing that we got the obvious out of the way first, because that gives plenty of room to discuss the myriad of other ways in which Deaner ’89 isn’t working. The first is that it isn’t all that funny, no matter how much Spence leans into the stoner and metal vibes of The Deaner. Sasso is able to wring a few chuckles out of his oblivious paternal role, and Mary Walsh’s full investment to the bit as the trainwreck, T-bird owning aunt of Dean’s girlfriend is quite the sight, even if it’s a performance more about energy than actual humour. A couple of clever bits of physical humour land (particularly the running gag of different ways Dean dismounts his bicycle), but not much else here is generating a lot of good will and mirth.
There are no less than four different movies happening in Deaner ’89 at the same time, all of them competing for attention and none of them meshing all that well. It flows about as well as a square wheel trying to roll uphill, but at least Deaner ’89 is its own mess and not just a collection of assembled skits dying quick deaths. It’s a prequel that doesn’t want to admit it’s a prequel. It’s a story of a student athlete getting harassed by a biker gang that wants him to throw a pivotal game (a thread that has zero business being here because it serves nothing). It’s movie where someone who recently discovered the awesomeness of metal tries to hit the road to Alberta to attend a Dokken concert. And to top that all off, Deaner ’89 wants to be taken seriously as a tale about finding one’s ancestral roots and fostering a sense of community.
And that last point is noble, but it’s still not working. While writer Spence and director Sam McGlynn are trying their best to inject a lot of heart and identity into Deaner ’89, this more serious undercurrent – which the writer and star seems genuinely passionate about – is at odds with the goofiness and fart gags around it. A lot of this thread’s failure to launch lands squarely at the feet of Spence, who is playing Dean fully formed, and not like a character that’s developing an arc. Dean’s heritage is treated more like a wrinkle in service of silly jokes than something more interesting.
The most obvious solution to this problem stares the viewer in the face throughout Deaner ’89. This film should be about a different, more original character that’s capable of taking on this emotional baggage and not one that already exists and is played by an actor who can’t switch up their style of delivery to fit a younger viewpoint. The idea of a young person in the 80s coming to terms with a cultural heritage that has been kept from them is ripe with comedic and dramatic potential, but Spence isn’t playing that character. He’s playing a middle aged dude that’s not even trying to give teenage vibes other than slapping on some braces and calling it a day. Or, if Spence really cared about the legacy of this character and wanted to lean into that, maybe it should’ve been played by an entirely different actor this time out; someone who could’ve laid down roots instead of just offering viewers the same old, same old.
The inability of Deaner ’89 to have a handle on what it’s own material is trying to say is staggering. Given the number of times Deaner ’89 tries to be earnest about its messages regarding indigenous identity, there’s no denying Spence’s sincerity or mistaking this as a passionless project. But it’s also an arrogant and disingenuous effort that also clearly wants to cash in on past glories, whether it wants to admit so or not. It’s tough to sit through Deaner ’89, but not hard to see how it all went so colossally wrong.
Deaner ’89 opens in Canadian theatres on Friday, September 6, 2023.
