Strange road trips being a fetish of mine, I was eager to look at the Scandinavian oddity Cool and Crazy on the Road, Knut Erik Jensen’s flick about a Norwegian men’s choir that travels through New York not long after Sept. 11.

It is a bit rambling, but there are undoubtedly some very heartwarming moments in the film, particularly the way the men are embraced by New Yorkers, whose emotions run raw in the wake of such a devastating and shocking terrorist attack. But what emerges is a crucial time capsule, a gaze into what was a brief moment in American history when it looked like the country just might, maybe, take stock of itself, its rampant self-centredness and its nutjob foreign policy. Since this movie was made, of course, the Yanks have gone off to wage a war all their sane allies warned them against, a war they’re now asking us to pony up for. This film, ostensibly about a choir from across the pond, ultimately becomes a sad lament for a lost opportunity. We aren’t the world, after all.

» Matthew Hays