Squeezebox - Short Takes

2003 16m30s prod Canadian Film Centre, p Anthony Leo, Andrew Rosen, d Andrew Hull, sc Loren Rattew, Andrew Hull, ph Brian Harper, ed Rob Brownridg,; with Jonathan Paul, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Jessica Sugar.

Is it Canada's fate to keep polka alive in North America? Recalling that perennial Grammy winner in the polka category is Walter Ostanek, a Canadian; now meet the Bachs family. While teen accordion prodigy Bradley Bachs (Jonathan Paul) is in his room industriously squeezing another organ, his father, despondent over the decline in polka's popularity in Canada, ends his life in the bathroom. Guilt-ridden and fearing being sent away to Utah to live with relatives. Bradley organizes a Bachs family reunion concert with his sister Lolly and their mother. But will his mother perform the family's signature tune, "Squeezebox"? Will Bradley's performance work with his friends, who are engaged in reshaping other, hipper musical traditions? In its minor and major keys, and somewhere between a messy suicide, a talking dog and sticky onanistic pleasures, Andrew Hull's clever and spirited Squeezebox, shall we say, verily pulses with energy and humour. More than, a quirky family comedy, Hull's film is also about a Canada in transition; Bradley's friends are busy creatively incorporating polka's peculiar cadences into their urban black musical mosaics; new mixes with old traditions. If all this sounds a bit precious, it is, but not overly so. Squeezebox has a winning sense of humour about itself that prevents it from becoming cloying and sentimental. And really, who can resist a film celebrating the arrival of something as irresistible and 21st-century Canadian as "ghetto polka"?

COPYRIGHT 2003 Canadian Independent Film & Television Publishing Association
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group