Director: Dave Thomas
Cast: Dave Thomas, Dan Aykroyd, Dave Foley, Matt Frewer

It's kind of infuriating when Canadian filmmakers moan and complain about the Canadian public not embracing their wonderful films... though I do admit to a degree it is amusing, since their arguments really show how dim-witted they are. One of the most popular complaints that Canadian writer/directors (the director is always also the writer or co-writer in a Canadian film!) make is that those darn Canadian movie theaters are almost always unwilling or very reluctant to exhibit a Canadian movie, instead showing (mostly) Hollywood product. They say that if Canadian movie theaters were to open up to Canadian films, a huge number of Canadian moviegoers would magically appear to see their Canadian films. To that I say: If you were the owner of a Canadian movie theater - a business where even multiple popular blockbusters make it difficult to stay in the black - you too would be reluctant to book cheap navel-gazing snoozefests that are without well-known actors. Another thing Canadian writer/directors like to say is that Hollywood is "brainwashing" Canadians to prefer Hollywood films to Canadian films. I'm sure any normal Canadian who, like most people around the world, likes to go to the movies to be entertained would be deeply insulted to hear that remark, and subsequently think more negatively about Canadian films. (Also remember, the Soviet Union and its satellite countries tried to force "good for you" movies on their publics for decades, yet pretty much failed.) A third thing Canadian writer/directors like to do in order to try and lose the failure stigma on themselves is to complain that Canadian television networks (including the state broadcaster CBC) and streaming services are not doing anywhere well enough to acquire and show Canadian films. Well, if you consider that services like Tubi, which freely shows tons of movies from independent filmmakers, and often of a crappy nature, that to me shows you Canadian writer/directors that your films are, for the most part, unwatchable for an audience than the films that are acquired. And when one of the TV networks or streaming services does show a Canadian movie, I have almost never seen it do well in the ratings. (The same basic phenomenon happened during the video store era, by the way.)

There's another thing that Canadian writer/directors like to claim in order to explain their lack of success, though it's something not used very often, for reasons I'll get into. Sometimes they will claim that it was the fault of the Canadian film distribution company, that it didn't market and/or widely release their films. Of course, when you publicly say that, it instantly sours you towards all Canadian film distributors, who will probably subsequently refuse to take on your future films, killing your Canadian movie career, so that's why this excuse is not used very often. But it does occasionally happen. Take the case of the Canadian comedy White Coats, written and directed (of course) by Dave Thomas, the hamburger king. Oops, I mean the guy from SCTV. Thomas was so annoyed by how Canadian distributor TVA Films handled the movie, that he voluntarily testified a year later in Canada's Parliament to Canadian politicians about the debacle. "We produced a movie, a $5 million [Canadian funds] comedy," he testified in Parliament, "We had Dan Aykroyd from Saturday Night Live, Dave Foley from Kids In The Hall, Matt Frewer, and so on." (The notable cast members also included Thomas himself, Maury Chaykin (Dances With Wolves), Carly Pope (Popular), Linda Boyd (Virgin River), and Saul Rubinek (Death Ship). "The movie we did was a teen movie, and if you take American Pie as an example, which only had Eugene Levy and then a bunch of unknown kids, there should have been a way to sell this movie to the Canadian public." During his testimony, Thomas didn't mention that after the film was completed, TVA Films (a division of Quebecor Media, one of the biggest and richest media conglomerates in Canada) at first made promotional posters which, for some strange reason, didn't name the big stars in its cast (except for Pope, if you could call her a "big star" at the time), a poster you can see in this paragraph. Thomas also didn't mention that TVA Films a little later decided to rename the movie as Intern Academy in Canada, a decision which bemused and annoyed Thomas. However, Thomas did say in his testimony, "But TVA, who are our distributors, spent $250,000 on television... their marketing commitment was somewhere around $750,000." If you think that's low, you're right - Thomas went on to say, "Now, $250,000 in television, I found out, is nothing, because one 30-second spot in Canada for The Simpsons is $12,000 or $14,000. Do the math. You do 20 spots and you've blown your whole budget."

While Thomas didn't go into the eventual box office figures in his testimony, I will; on its opening weekend, the movie made barely over $100,000 at the Canadian box office, which is about the equivalent of a movie in America grossing just a little over $1 million in its opening weekend - not good at all. Thomas subsequently said, "So $250,000 for a television campaign for a broad-based commercial movie is nothing. You might as well save the money. You might as well put it in bonds and give it to your children. It is a waste of money." Thomas' producer partner Nic Wry shortly after added at the hearing, "[Research house] Decima did a survey for us of a thousand Canadians in digital homes, and when asked, have your heard of or seen Intern Academy, over 90% of Canadians said they had never heard of it." A little later in the hearing, Thomas compared the handling of his movie to the same era Canadian teen comedy film Going The Distance (retitled National Lampoon's Going The Distance in America, and not to be confused with the 2010 Drew Barrymore film of the same name), and said that its broadcaster, CHUM, "[They] promoted the hell out of that movie. They made $1.5 million domestically, which was a good return for the budget of the movie." While I will admit that Thomas made some good key points, and I admit that I have seen a few good Canadian commercial films get greatly mistreated by Canadian distributors (like The Assignment), there are some other things Thomas did not say that need to be considered. First, in my research on the film, I uncovered evidence that before its release, TVA Films did a pre-release screening to a test audience, and the whole test audience hated the film. Also, when the film was released to theaters, almost every Canadian film critic hated the film. Third, despite the film's notable cast, no American distributor was willing to release it to American theaters, possibly because an American film reviewer working for Hollywood trade magazine Variety viewed the film when it opened in Canada, and hated it.

So, with the film generating so much hate, maybe TVA decided to cut their losses and do the bare minimum the Canadian government required of them. The movie was subsequently dumped directly to DVD in America (under its original title White Coats), and on a minor DVD label to boot. With both sides of the film now discussed, I admit I was curious to see if Thomas or the many naysayers were right about the movie... plus a fact about the movie that made me laugh: when the film was dumped on DVD in Italy, it was retitled The Sexiest Hospital In The World (I bet that particular title change really bemused and annoyed Thomas.) The events of the film take place at and around St. Albert's Hospital, which might be considered the worst hospital in Can- uh, I mean Amer- uh, I mean North America. St. Elsewhere has nothing on this hospital, which is administrated by one Dr. Kipp (Aykroyd), a sleazy guy who is selling the hospital's equipment on the black market. Many of the other doctors at the hospital are disreputable as well, such as the unprofessional heart surgeon Dr. Whitehead (Foley) and the crazy forensics physician Dr. Keller (Frewer). More professional is Dr. Olson (Thomas), though he's a humorless and by-the-book kind of doctor, though his crusty attitude might in part be explained by the six young interns that are currently tagging along with him at the hospital. While Mira (Ingrid Kavelaars, Dreamcatcher) is a sycophant towards Olson and the rest of the staff, Dale (Pat Kelly) is a ladies' man, token African-North-American Marlon (Viv Leacock) is a "cool" dude, Mitzi (Christine Chatelain, The Collector) is lacking in the smarts department, and token Asian-North-American Christine (Jane McLean) is stiffer than Olson and aims to become a great doctor. The sixth intern is Mike (Peter Oldring, The Man), a well-meaning but self-doubting intern, one that only got into medical school due to his powerful doctor father (Rubinek) and mother. Dr. Olson has little patience for these rag-tag interns, especially since they keep screwing up both in and out of the hospital, but that might be the least of all seven's problems, since Dr. Kipp's reason for selling the medical equipment is to get funds to keep the struggling hospital open.

While Thomas did realize that $250,000 wasn't enough for television advertising for a broad-based commercial movie, it seems he didn't realize that a $5 million Canadian (which is about 3.5 million in American dollars) allotment is not enough for the production budget of a broad-based commercial movie, at least from what you'll see throughout White Coats. In fairness to Thomas, he did manage to stretch the meager funds somewhat in key areas. He makes sure that every location in and out of the hospital has adequate set dressings as well as enough background extras. Also, he managed to shoot the bulk of the movie in a real abandoned hospital in Edmonton, which does add a little credibility to the air in most of the hospital scenes, though the fact the emergency room entrance looks really small is jarring whenever it appears. As it turns out, the phony-looking emergency room entrance (plus Mitzi's obviously stage bound apartment interior) is one of many ways the movie comes across as too cheap for its own good. The special effects rendered to show the outside of the hospital at night look as bad as the night shot of the courthouse in the credits of the sitcom Night Court. The cinematography looks fuzzy and dirty on top of what you are accustomed to see in low budget Canadian television shows of the era; in fact, the cheesy musical score by Ian Thomas (Hostage For A Day) also has a sitcom-like air around it. The low budget might also in part explain why other aspects of Thomas' direction are pretty hopeless as well. There is a real claustrophobic feeling throughout, partially due to Thomas' insistence of having the actors in most scenes jammed up together and almost touching the camera lens. A bigger offending factor is that for the most part, the movie has next to no energy to it, whether the particular scene is comic or serious. Scene after scene goes by with the same fatigued feeling throughout, which will make you think that Thomas had absolutely no passion towards this project despite it being his baby.

Since I made a point to illustrate White Coats has next to no energy with its direction, you've probably guessed that the movie is very unfunny. Wrong - it's is completely unfunny. I simply didn't laugh at any of the attempts at humor on display here. Now, you might think that a hospital setting is to blame for this, because hospitals are a place for death and dying, but some other hospital-based comedies like the George C. Scott-starring The Hospital and the James Spader-starring Critical Care managed to succeed with their attempts because they were very carefully executed by all concerned. But with White Coats, care and skill apparently went out the window before filming started. There are extremely lame comic dialogue exchanges (Question: "Are you sexually active?" Answer:"No, I just lie there."), familiar setups that weren't funny the first time they were put in a movie (a doctor and nurse sneak into a private booth to have sex, ho ho), pathetic gross-out humor such as a burst colonoscopy bag and a food fight using human organs, and a surprising number of "comic" scenes that are based on familiar and tired urban legends, such as a patient having a Barbie doll stuffed up his rectum, or when the interns are in class and swab the insides of their cheeks and one intern is told her swab showed a sperm cell, hee hee. That last gag, by the way, not only depends on the dubious claim that the intern doesn't know what a sperm cell looks like, but also depends on the audience not questioning why the interns are still attending classes while being used at other times by the hospital to diagnose and treat patients with serious medical conditions. The diagnosis I have of this script was, again, that screenwriter Thomas simply wasn't trying very hard, and not just with the humor portion of the movie. For example, Thomas has the Mike character provide (very sporadic) narration, even though his character surprisingly isn't given significant focus in other areas of the movie. But the script for White Coats is missing something that practically all good comedies have - a plot. Sure, there is occasionally a mention of the hospital's dire financial straits, as well as once in a while the interns wondering if they will pass the requirements to become actual doctors, but other than those occasional mentions, the movie is basically just one wacky situation after the other that is immediately or almost immediately forgotten about when the next scene starts. While you can have a stand-up comedian on stage tell one joke after another, a comedic movie on the silver screen needs a plot to keep everything together and to ensure that you care about the characters. The characters in the classic comedy Airplane! were all goofballs, but with a plot that challenged their lives and got them going, you cared about them despite their silly words and actions as they worked towards a goal.

With those last remarks of mind, you probably had a pretty accurate guess as to how I felt about the characters (and the actors playing them) in White Coats. First, I will get to the major players in the cast. I'm not sure how Thomas was able to convince the major (at the time) names to appear in this movie, but I wouldn't be surprised if the reason was blackmail, considering how they perform and how they are used. Matt Frewer has just one scene, though in that scene he plays the part of "crazy physician" so broadly that it's easy to see he has contempt for both his role and the rest of the movie, and didn't seem to care his character at one point calls the Asian character of Christine, "Miss China". Dave Foley has a few brief scenes, and he tries to be a weird a**hole of a doctor, but his weirdness and a**holishness just come across as being bizarre yet unfunny. Dan Aykroyd appears a few more times than Foley throughout the movie, though it's clear like Frewer and Foley that he knocked off all his appearances pretty quickly, and equally clear he too is phoning in his performance. Dave Thomas himself comes off best of all the big names, giving his character a believable and strict professional workaholic personality, though occasionally showing a little humanity... but no funny humor, if you're wondering. (He also disappears for some significant stretches before eventually reappearing again.) As for the six unknowns playing the interns, all six do show signs of acting talent, both comic and dramatic. But their characters are all pretty much interchangable; we learn pretty much nothing about their backgrounds, their hopes, their dreams, and so forth. And I bet actor Viv Leacock was nonplussed by the fact that he'd be playing a character with some racial stereotypical behavior... and actress Jane McLean as well. The fact that Thomas conceived these characters in a pseudo-racial stereotypical way instead of trying some fresh spins - why not make Leacock's character very serious, and McLean's character wild? - further add evidence to the theory that Thomas in any of his roles in White Coats simply wasn't trying at all. The end results of the movie are so incredibly bad, I am sure the hamburger king could have made a better movie.

(Posted August 10, 2026)