The Last Straw Reviews

The third and final chapter of the Wilson/Walker trilogy produced by the National Film Board of Canada (the first two were THE MASCULINE MYSTIQUE and 90 DAYS) picks up where the last film left off. Grana begins his career as a sperm donor, and Wodoslawsky settles into his marriage to Korean mail-order-bride Pak. Much to the clinic's surprise, Grana's sperm has an amazing motility rate of 99.5, making him "The Most Potent Man in the World." Unfortunately, his physical appearance is so unremarkable that most women looking to be artificially inseminated skim past his picture in the album of donors. Frustrated by his lack of popularity, Grana gets himself a seedy manager (Martin) and makes an appearance on a radio call-in show to tout his potency, getting results that wildly exceed his expectations. Meanwhile, Wodoslawsky and Pak discover that their inability to have children is caused by Wodoslawsky's low sperm count. After a number of ridiculous methods and contraptions designed to solve the problem fail miserably, they decide to visit the clinic, where things get even zanier when a bevy of commandos from Australia posing as rugby players kidnap Grana hoping he can bolster the sagging Aussie birth rate. Produced for $600,000 and more or less improvised by the cast (Wilson and Walker's usual method), THE LAST STRAW is as about as tasteful as any comedy about artificial insemination can be. Because the characters are dealt with sensitively, the situation retains some dignity, thus enabling director Walker to explore its absurdity without becoming vulgar. Though the film suffers from some haphazard pacing, its vision of the near future is amusing and its good humor deserves to be enjoyed by those who will not be put off by the subject matter.