Faced with declining readership and the threat of the paper being sold off by owner Stan (Gordon Pinsent), he tries to save the paper's fortunes by writing fabricated news stories inspired by old movies suggested to him by the owner of the local video rental store (Aaron Ashmore), which works until Lucy (Meredith MacNeill), a journalist from the big city, arrives to investigate after he turns the 1996 thriller Extreme Measures into a story about secret medical experiments being conducted in Grand Rock.
[2] The cast also includes Kristin Booth, Tammy Isbell and Peter Keleghan as colleagues of Leonard's at the paper, Leah Pinsent as Grand Rock's mayor Jane Davis, and Art Hindle, David Reale, Josette Halpert, Ryan Worthing, Lorna Wright, Darcy Gerhart, Darcy Campbell, Shauna Bailey and Joyce Cyr in supporting roles.
[1] Ken Eisner of The Georgia Straight wrote that "for his debut feature, writer-director Daniel Perlmutter keeps the proportions exactly right, balancing a steady stream of small laughs with a story that engages, mainly through the hearty efforts of actors all on the same page—Page One, you could say.
"[5] Chris Knight of the National Post opined that "while the plot has a slightly by-the-numbers feel – a tepid rom-com angle is ill-advised and does nothing for the story – it gets a lot of mileage out of its kooky concept."
Filmed in Midland, Ont., Daniel Perlmutter's quaint (and partly crowd-sourced) feature is 87 minutes of fun time, if a little clichéd in its depiction of village mentalities and humdrumness.