Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy

A drug company is close to collapse. The research team is given a deadline: a saleable product within a month or the laboratory closes. Dr Cooper finds a compound. The drug locates a person's happiest memory and holds them in it. The subjects smile and do not speak. The company puts it on the market. The advertising campaign is large, the sales explode and the country is taking it. Then the side effect shows: people cannot come out of the memory. Cooper knows and cannot say it; he is famous now himself. Kelly Makin directs. Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson are in the cast; the five share nearly every part in the film. It is a Canadian and American production. The company comes from the television sketch programme Kids in the Hall; the film is that programme carried to the cinema. The film failed at the box office on release and the group broke up for a time. The matter it treats is happiness made into a product; the film takes the drug industry and the language of advertising as direct targets. The narrative sits between sketch structure and a feature; some sections stand on their own. The five performers playing many parts is its best known feature; the women's roles are in the same hands. The film became a cult later and was rediscovered by the audience of the television show. The humour is dark; the jokes are about death, depression and loneliness. Its limit is structure; the narrative is scattered, the jokes uneven, and the ending rushed. Who it is for: viewers who like Canadian sketch humour and black comedy. Who it is not for: it is scattered, odd, and the humour is not for everyone.