I don't know how to account for the two stars. I guess the camera was stable and the audio was clear. I didn't see the microphone so that's a good thing.This is not a film. This is an embarrassment. The music is so poor it's really embarrassing.I'm not a big fan of musicals, but the Jungle Book, Moulin Rouge, Chicago were entertaining. They had good songs, the music is great (especially the Jungle Book), great lyrics and a good story.This has none of those ingredients. The music is elevator music quality. The lyrics sound like they're written by a 12-year-old who's impressed with rhyming Venus and penis.For some reason this film is advertising for other films or attempting to appeal/pander to the audience by referring to other films. Why mention the Notebook? The Notebook or any half-decent film would not give a shout-out to some Canadian films, so why do you do it in your films?The rhymes are really poor, rhyming "alone" with "poem." The meter is messed up, there's a lyric about the umbilical chord which was so forced.In this masterpiece, the boy's family forces a hockey scout to listen to their terrible songs. The director is completely oblivious to that irony.There's just random Canadian stuff thrown to pander to the extremely small market. His girlfriend has a fragrance allergy. There are random "ehs" thrown in the lyrics. A British musical would not put "innit" in their lyrics, but British filmmakers are professionals and would hire professional writers to write their lyrics. This director felt that he can do it all, write songs, write the screenplay and direct.If I were him I would make a documentary on how I tried to retrieve and destroy every last copy of this film. If you are unaware, this was a box office failure. It wasn't a success on any level afterwards. As of speaking it is not available on iTunes anywhere except Ireland. It takes less than 4 rentals/purchases to make it worthwhile keeping it in the iTunes store, so this is not even getting single digit rentals. It has not been released on Bluray. And finally, even pirates are not pirating this thing. It is not worth anything to anyone.Don't believe me? Go find a copy and watch it. Then come back here and say "you were wrong." Write a review. The problem is that some people give this film 10 stars raising it score to 4.9. 18% have given this film 10 stars, meaning they think this is one of the best films of all time.I give it two stars and the average is 4.9. Some say 10, some say 1 and I say 2. We can't all be right.FYI, Mr. Director, Venus is the second closest planet to the sun. Saying (wear a sweater, out there) "it's colder than Venus" doesn't make that much sense. Earth is colder than Venus. Not that you care. You probably wrote this film in 12 hours using a "How to make a film in two weeks and make millions" self-help book.

Score: A Hockey Musical (2010): Dir: Michael McGowan / Cast: Noah Reid, Allie MacDonald, Marc Jordan, Olivia Newton-John, Stephen McHattie: Corny yet ambitious musical about not just scoring within the game of hockey, but also scoring in life itself. Noah Reid plays the newest hockey sensation whose position as a passive aggressive is put to the test. His parents brought him up to be uncompetitive but when recruited everything is tested. Director Michael McGowan succeeds largely because the theme of violence in sports is heavy. He takes a risk with this theme in terms of the gender image associated with the sport. The musical numbers are mostly lame but given an edge due too quirky visual elements and locations. Noah Reid does well with the material. He deals with his upbringing as well as his relationship with the girl next door plus the whole rule system of the sport. His handling of violence after being shamed on the ice is effective yet again, somewhat corny. Allie MacDonald plays the girl next door whom has been his friend since childhood. She plays the cello with an Italian instructor. Unfortunately Reid cannot see what viewers, and MacDonald already know. Marc Jordan and Olivia Newton-John play his overbearing religious parents. The two are too weird to take seriously. Jordan has bright glasses that do not compliment him, and although it is nice to hear Newton-John sing, she is hardly doing Grease here. What works is a strong message of fair competition and the ability to score above it all with the ever powerful embrace of a hug. Score: 7 / 10

Funded in part by the Canadian government film funding agency Telefilm Canada (which usually has no clue as to what movies would appeal to a mass audience), "Score: A Hockey Musical" was one of the few Canadian movies to get a theatrical release in Canada as large as a Hollywood movie. It was a disaster at the box office, no doubt because of the obvious fact that the premise - a hockey musical - sounded so stupid. So the movie instantly had one strike against it. But after watching the movie, more problems are evident, including:(1) The central figure of the movie, the sheltered teenager who becomes a big hockey star overnight, is a really bland and colorless individual. In fact, ALL the characters in this movie are shallow.(2) The central story of the movie is just a bunch of clichés we have seen countless times before, like the hero's female "best friend" who has a crush on him but he doesn't realize it etc. etc. etc.(3) The songs. ALL of the songs sound completely alike! That's bad enough, but what makes them even worse are the lyrics that sound like they were the first thing that popped into the songwriters' minds instead of being carefully polished, the awkward way the singers jam in extra words in a desperate attempt to say everything they want, plus the fact that none of the cast (except for Olivia Newton-John) is able to sing.(4) The cinematography. A light-hearted musical should be bright and colorful. Not this movie - it has the Canadian trademark of photography that is dark and murky.Maybe this would have worked as a two minute coming attractions spoof done for a sketch comedy TV show. But as a feature film, it is deadly. I'm glad I didn't pay to see this movie!

Telefilm's most recent Great White (Northern) Hype is another "Men With Brooms" (didn't they learn the first time?!). Ultra-contrived to match its funders' ideas of 'quirky', it manages to be a comedy almost entirely lacking any actual humour, with just about the shallowest, one- dimensional characters I've seen outside of third-rate TV shows.As a Canadian, I would very much like for the films made in our country to be of high quality and worthy of taking pride in. Think of the output in the late 80's through the 90's, when we still funded auteur directors and invested in their development, regardless of how much 'commercial' potential their films had - this is how actual cinematic talents like Guy Maddin, Atom Egoyan, Deepa Mehta, Patricia Rozema, Don McKellar and Bruce MacDonald were able to get their start. Now, we're at a point where people in the industry think they've matured/progressed while they're making and promoting films like this one, which turns out, almost unbelievably, to be just as terrible a film as "The Love Guru". Seriously.What is it going to take for those who are in a position to make decisions as to funding, etc. to realise that trying to pander to domestic audiences through forced, patronising, on-the- nose attempts at 'Canadian content' is never going to result in a film that is as commercially successful as they hope (not to mention that it's never going to result in anything of any actual cinematic or aesthetic quality)? And anyway, if they're really trying to appeal to some genuine, albeit misguided and juvenile, sense of Canadian patriotism, why make one of the main selling points of your film the casting of Olivia Newton-John?