You know Tyler Labine. Well, I mean you don’t know him, but you know him to see him because he’s done enough TV to kill any actor. So with his 2008 film Control Alt Delete finally getting out into theatres properly, it’s time to pay proper homage.
Control Alt Delete is weird — there’s no getting over that — but if you can open your heart to a different kind of romantic comedy, you may just get touched in all the right places and a few inappropriate ones. This movie is all about love, rejection and hardware. For many technologically inclined and socially inept folks like Labine’s lead character, your computer is your best friend. I mean, c’mon people, how many of you have actually named your iPhones?
It’s a modern struggle and when Labine begins to find solace in the pleasures of well, his home desktop as opposed to his ex-girlfriend, things begin to go a little nuts and end up heartwarming, or at least as heartwarming as sex with computers can get. It’s all very J.G Ballard or Jeff Noon in a way, enough so it it at least ended up with an 18A rating here in Canada. But instead of going full bore into what could have turned into the North American equivalent of a Takeshi Miike film, Cameron Labine, Tyler’s brother and the film’s writer/director, has churned out an intriguing meditation on love, fetishism, technology and our intimate relationships to all three.
Now, it’s not going to win an Oscar and Lord knows it may not even get full megaplex distribution, but in a day and age when Canadian cinema feels the need to resort to rehashing Paul Gross yet again to try and drive in some bucks off the strength of a movie that almost a decade old, it’s a pleasure to see a director take risks and a lead actor step just far enough out of his comfort zone that you can’t help but giggle. That’s what film experiences are all about.