Escape to Canada
July 2007 Reviewed by: Marc Mickelson Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

As I walked around downtown Montreal a few months ago, I smelled an uncommon but familiar odor: pot smoke. It's the sort of thing we Americans notice because it's not something we smell on our streets, but it seemed like a usual occurrence in Montreal -- I smelled it on a half-dozen different blocks.

Shortly after, I watched Escape to Canada and things became a little clearer. The thesis of this provocative new documentary from Disinformation Company, whose stock in trade is provocative documentaries, is that Canada, not the US, is North America's "Freedomland," as it is called in the movie. "We're not like Americans," say some proud Canadians. Many of us Americans are not who we seem to be in the sixth year of the second Bush Administration. While we fight a war on drugs and a culture war against same-sex marriage, the Canadian people have embraced both in the spirit of greater freedom and uncurbed rights. Vancouver is unofficially renamed "Vansterdam," and you can smell pot smoke on the streets of Montreal. Are these bad things?

They are in the eyes of many Americans and even some Canadians. Self-proclaimed "pot activist" Marc Emery led the charge to legalize marijuana in Canada (though he now faces possible extradition to the US). Same-sex marriage was legalized in some Canadian provinces in 2003 and across the country in 2005. Deserters from the US armed forces still consider Canada a haven, especially now that the Iraq War has gone terribly awry. Filmmaker Albert Nerenberg, whose previous movie was the lively and thoughtful Stupidity, juggles all of this, creating a quick-paced movie that's sometimes surprising and sometimes funny. It's a bit disjointed and repetitive, but Nerenberg pounds home his point -- that Canada is the new home of the free.

The DVD's video image varies because of all the disparate materials used to construct the movie, but it is a little soft at its very best. This is nothing to fret over -- you won't buy this DVD as demo material for your home-theater system. The extras are ample and include extended interviews with Marc Emery and with Tommy Chong from the comedy team Cheech & Chong. These are worthwhile watching after seeing the movie.

While neither legalized marijuana nor same-sex marriage has become federal law in the US, Escape to Canada provides a blueprint to Americans who believe in Liberty with a capital "L." It shows us what North America could be like at some future time when all the puritanical old fogeys have died off and people with a more civil-libertarian bent have taken over. I'm not gay or a pot smoker, but I am hopeful about the prospect of living in a country where same-sex marriage and legalized marijuana are embraced in the name of greater personal freedom. Escape to Canada gives a glimpse of life in that time.

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