The Cart Boy (1995) Review

 

The Cart Boy (1995)

The Cart Boy follows to mall security guards as they confront the mysterious “Cart Boy”, who keeps stealing shopping carts from the hill near the mall.

This short film, made before One Last Shot, sees some more of the groundwork of Trailer Park Boys get set, including the kitty-loving Darren, aka the “Cart Boy” and his hobbies in stealing carts, a mainstay of Bubbles in TPB. His character is beat-for-beat what we’ll know as Bubbles, and he even has a cat by the same name. We also see Ricky make his first appearance and his boss, Jason, is eerily close to what will become Julian, though a bit more of a hardass. We see a nice blend of hilarious, trashy humor, but also some serious, heartfelt storytelling that will create a bond between the “Cart Boy” and the mall security guards, who are constantly burdened with having to find the missing shopping carts already. It’s so stupid, yet brilliant considering it became the premise for a whole character and some story elements within the hit Canadian sitcom.

We also get the debuts of John Paul Tremblay, Robb Wells, and Mike Smith respectively, with Tremblay and Wells chemistry coming across fantastic here, being hilarious in their attempts to stop the “Cart Boy” from stealing shopping carts. Mike Smith in turn, gives us our first look at Bubbles, before he was Bubbles, playing the “Cart Boy” to stupidly funny and sympathetic perfection.

The Cart Boy, also directed by Mike Clattenburg, is a unique and silly project that captures the genius of this group of guys and their abilities to make similar characters that all mesh extremely well in their seamless blend of Canadian humor and heartfelt (but ridiculous) stories that show off their creativity that led to TPB.

7.4/10