Your Money or Your Wife (2015) Reviews

• First feature by Iain MacLeod delivers laughs and heart

  paulandrewkimball2016-03-14

  When his girlfriend dumps him, the meek and mild Lionel (Craig Brown) goes to a bar, gets drunk, and passes out on the wintry walk home after a drunken vision leads him into someone's else garage. When he wakes up the next day he is confronted by the gun-toting homeowner Warren (Brian MacQuarrie), who mistakes Lionel for a mysterious master criminal named Mike with whom Warren and his wife Elsie (Anna Valentina) have signed on to conduct a burglary (without ever having met him, naturally). Lionel becomes an unwilling accomplice in an incompetent home invasion where he meets and falls for the homeowner, Annie (Meredith MacNeil). If this all sounds implausibly silly, that's because it is, which is why it's so much fun! First-time feature director Iain MacLeod (who also penned the screenplay) just keeps ramping up the jokes and situational humour in this screwball romantic comedy to the point where even the most hardened cynic will find it impossible not to get caught up in the laughs. Your Money or Your Wife is played with a lot of good-natured verve, and features hilarious turns by the entire cast (MacQuarrie was my favourite, although an extended cameo by Josh MacDonald as Annie's husband almost steals the show), and highlights some charming heart- of-gold chemistry between Brown and MacNeil in the romantic subplot. Quintessential Canadian humour that's accessible to everyone, it's the kind of film that will make you want to see what MacLeod comes up with next.