Samantha Bee and Jason Jones are a real life married couple, best known for their awkward comedy stylings on The Daily Show. In Cooper's Camera, they play a trashy suburban married couple to some degree of amusing success.

Jones plays Gord, a hapless dad who substitutes shoddy second hand plastic toys for the Star Wars toys his kids covets. Instead of clawing back cash loaned to a neighborhood sleazeball played by Dave Foley (who is still as happy as ever to give a little full frontal show), he accepts a video camera which is unwrapped on Christmas morning, 1985, the setting of the film. His long suffering wife, Nancy is perennially disappointed with his failings, such as getting the camera instead of a pair of tickets down to Orlando.

Gord and Nancy have a troubled relationship, that much is evident. She is 4 months pregnant, he mocks her belly by calling her Dom Delouise, but it is clear that the child may not be his. This becomes more clear when we learn that Gordon (why is every Canadian comedy character called Gord now, btw?) has some serious sexual issues, involving impotence and a lust for stolen Sears mannequins. Nancy clearly has some kind of connection with Jones' sleazy travel agent brother Tim (played by Peter Keleghan) but is generally resigned to her fate with her dough headed fella.

Toronto-based director Warren P. Sonoda mines the 80's styles for all their worth, and in fact, more than they are worth considering how much nostalgic mining has already been applied to that woebegon decade. Similarly, the film, shot on the scratchy video of the titular camera, largely by a smart mouthed younger son, is meant to be a device to transport us back to those tacky times. It sort of works.

Sonoda surrounds his two stars with a cast of mixed comedic ability. The leader of the pack here is good ol' Mike Beaver, resplendent with a mullet and stache, delivering his shock-laden lines in fluent Southern Ontario white trash patois. There are lots of laughs here, most of them tied to drunkeness, trashiness and bodily functions. There are lots of non-laughs too though. And one question? Why is this film set in Rochester, New York? It's so clearly a Canadian film set some place in the Golden Horseshoe, the attempt at Americanizing the setting was a poor move: Gord and Nancy and their clan of losers are so clearly hosers.

Cooper's Camera is definitely good for some low brow laughs and should have a future filling out the Cancon needs of broadcasters not afraid of the lewd and crude.