TIFF Review: Matthew Rankin’s Ladies and Gentleman, Brian Mulroney Succumbs to Smugness

“Politics is show business for ugly people.” — Roger Stone

Canada seems boring to most, but I was recently trying to make it sound more interesting to an American friend by explaining the nation’s current nepo-baby predicament. The respective sons of the country’s two most prominent post-war Prime Ministers, Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney, had initially gone down different paths. Justin Trudeau, the sire of ’70s Canadian progressivism, had of course taken it on himself to be the nation’s answer to Barack Obama, popular for about four years before sputtering out in another five of neoliberal gridlock. Now he’s just happy starting a production company and dating Katy Perry. On the other hand, Ben Mulroney, the offspring of Canada’s Ronald Reagan, coasted for decades as a lightweight Canadian entertainment television host until pivoting to an extreme anti-woke social-media presence that seems to be setting him up as a potential new right-wing demagogue, if maybe just in local instead of federal politics. 

Even framing this around Obama and Reagan points to the cultural imperialism that haunts Canada. This is especially true for an existential crisis spurred by the current American President’s tantrums over trade. So arrives at a very special moment Ladies and Gentleman, Brian Mulroney, a remix-documentary investigation into Canada’s own political image. It’s of course the new film from Matthew Rankin, a very niche hyperformalist Canadian director who’s coming off the crossover success of the gentle crowdpleaser Universal Language. It’s admirable for his follow-up to be so insular and aggressive, basically taking the boringness of Canada, especially its politics, as a gag in and of itself to be stretched over 100 minutes. 

As for the subject: Mulonrey himself was frequently compared to Robert Redford by pundits, and that he was considered charismatic and handsome says more about Canadian politicians than anything, which Ladies and Gentlemen will of course wring for countless jokes. Split across six chapters beginning with Mulroney’s failed Conservative Party leadership bid in 1976 and ending with his landslide federal-election victory in 1984, the film seems something of an incomplete picture. A second part detailing the actual effects of his nine-year reign on the country—again frequently compared to Reagan’s free-market focused governing—feels like it must be made. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, as it stands, is aggressively stylized per Rankin’s usual, with rapid-fire editing, chintzy effects, and cartoonish gags, be it Mulroney styled like Liberace for his 1976 conservative conference speech, or laser beams and glowing red eyes superimposed over other figures. Even if one can see how the film communicates Mulroney as an effective point for the conservative party of Canada’s transition from dusty, boring evil to media-friendly wickedness, it all has an unlikable air of liberal smugness. If anything, one thinks it could go harder on Mulroney, but for an endeavor so stylized, you realize everything about it is just fixated on appearance, as pundits were with the Prime Minister. Maybe this makes Rankin’s project more understandable to an audience beyond Canada, but will anyone outside of the Great White North be watching it in the first place?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney premiered at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival.