By MATTHEW A. MACDONALD

I don't mean to offend anyone, but ...

When I was teenager (1993-1999), and before I was particularly passionate about filmmaking and took a genuine liking for the certainly not mainstream films of Jean-Luc Goddard, Vittorio De Sica, and Michelangelo Antonioni (though, alas, no Canadian directors of note), my friends and I generally understood that if one of us referred to a movie or television show as being "so Canadian," it simply meant the production values were relatively low, the images were inexplicably grainer than American productions we were used to seeing, the acting was not quite as good as American productions, and the movie or show itself was often not quite as interesting.

This may sound harsh, but it's true, and I think it was, and perhaps is still, true for a lot of people. For example, the writing and acting in the new TV show "Chicago Code" is clearly a cut above the writing and acting in the Canadian "Rookie Blue," although Canadian production values have otherwise definitely improved since the 1990s compared to American productions.

When I first met the woman who would become my wife, she expressed the same feeling about Canadian cinema. Canadian movies, she felt, just didn't stand up very well next to American movies, at least most of the time. Sure, she loved Canadian children's shows like "Danger Bay," but her general feeling was that Canadian movies and TV shows were, on a whole, not so much "so Canadian," but rather "too Canadian."

In 1995, for instance, while U.S. studios released movies like Apollo 13, Braveheart, Babe, Sense and Sensibility, Dead Man Walking, Leaving Las Vegas, and Nixon, Canadian filmmakers gave us what? Here are the Genie nominees for Best (Canadian) Picture of 1995:

(1) "Magic in the Water," a children's film about which Roger Ebert writes: "One of the problems with the first two-thirds of "Magic in the Water" is that we don't see Orky [the sea creature the movie is focused on]. One of the problems with the last third is that we do. Orky turns out to be singularly uncharismatic, looking like an ashen Barney on downers. ... "Magic in the Water" is innocuous fun, but slow, and not distinguished in the special effects department."

(2) "Le Confessional"

(3) "Liste noire"

(4) "Margaret's Museum" [a decent, if still a bit "too-Canadian" film, in my opinion]

(5) "Rude"

Huh?

Yes, the U.S. spends a lot more money on films, which accounts for its higher output and generally higher production values, but then it seems the Canadian solution is a strange one: produce films that are too-often so culturally idiosyncratic and self-absorbed that they only rarely and then often only tangentially touch upon universal themes that would allow them to appeal to a broader audience and break out of the "so Canadian/too Canadian" mold.

Part of the problem may be the hybrid identity life in Canada often forces upon people. It is often said that Americans, the British, the French, the Japanese, and so on, generally have a much clearer, more coherent, positive sense of national identity than Canadians, who very often include "not American" as an implicit part of their self-understanding. As a result, I suspect, it may be easier for filmmakers from these countries to move beyond persistent personal questions of identity and belonging to make films with more confidence and much broader appeal because they focus on more universal themes or, when they focus on more idiosyncratic concerns, at least they do not simply assume that audiences will care—they actually make an effort to show the audience why it should care.

Sure, it's important to tell different, meaningful stories, and Canadian filmmakers certainly do. But when Canadian cinema becomes mired in cultural idiosyncrasy and narcissistically obsessed with telling Canadian stories and stories about it's search for "identity," all the while simply assuming that other people will care, as I believe it sometimes does, instead of simply telling good stories, it suffers and becomes "too much."