At GM Place on Monday, October 20

It’s possible that Céline Dion has spent just a little too much time in Las Vegas. That would explain why her current touring show unfolds something like an outsized casino variety program, starting with a seemingly endless 25-minute set by the profoundly unfunny comedian Gordie Brown. Another Canadian who has done his share of time on the Strip, Brown offered impressions of the hottest young stars of today—you know, people like Vanilla Ice, Billy Ray Cyrus, and John Wayne. Way to stay au courant, Gordie!

Not that Dion’s audience could care less about who’s making the charts—or having crude penises scrawled on them by Perez Hilton—in 2008. The singer herself makes no pretence of being on the cutting edge, and it was clear from the moment she appeared on a raised platform at centre stage that this would be a greatest-hits show, heavy on songs made famous by other performers. Clad in a lilac-coloured mini-dress, Dion opened with the one-two punch of “I Drove All Night” (a hit for Cyndi Lauper in 1989) and “The Power of Love” (Jennifer Rush in ’85, Laura Branigan in ’87, and, um, Nana Mouskouri and Air Supply and some other people no one cares about). It wasn’t long before she was onto “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”, one of Jim Steinman’s more wrist-slittingly mock-operatic numbers, originally penned for Meat Loaf.

That’s when it occurred to me that Steinman is a perfect match for Dion. Like Meat Loaf, the Quebec-born megastar is about as subtle as a hand grenade. She has a taste for songs with dramatic pauses and weepy crescendos, with big choruses that she can knock out of the park. Dion’s is a performance style that even the deaf could comprehend: you can tell when you’re supposed to be feeling something just by watching her screw up her eyes and throw her fist in the air. This emotional maximalism arguably reached its peak at the end of the monumentally self-pitying “All By Myself” (Eric Carmen, 1975), when Dion dropped to her knees like a Puccini heroine before collapsing altogether. It could only have been more over-the-top if she had ascended to the rafters and ignited a satchel charge, distributing herself over the crowd in a fine pink mist while the final notes rang out.

This was a concert that was long on spectacle, complete with eight prodigiously skilled dancers who commandeered the stage during the many costume changes. The most impressive of these segments featured flamenco-inspired duets, which led into Dion’s recent single “Eyes on Me”. For that Middle Eastern–flavoured number, the singer strode about the stage with a white silk cloak billowing behind her, which made her look a little like an earthbound parachutist. The eye candy kept coming when the dancers reappeared mid-song, brandishing lengths of black-and-white fabric like toreadors’ capes. Visually arresting and (I’ll admit it) musically intriguing, “Eyes on Me” was easily the evening’s highlight.

The most absurd moment, on the other hand, came when Dion sang “The Prayer” in a duet with Andrea Bocelli, who appeared via prerecorded video. Many in the audience greeted the appearance of the Italian tenor’s visage on the big screens with applause and whoops of approval. He couldn’t hear you, folks. Trust me on that one.

Almost as strange was seeing Dion, who is perhaps the Platonic antithesis of a rock ’n’ roller, lead an audience in a sing-along version of “We Will Rock You”. Of course, that was just a warm-up for Queen’s “The Show Must Go On”, redeemed only by the fact that Dion had the decency not to digitally resurrect Freddie Mercury for a virtual duet.

Speaking of things that go on (and on), the final encore was the inevitable tearjerker—need I name it?—which came complete with pennywhistle, white candles, and an introductory Titanic montage. I’d like to be able to say it got me pondering the human spirit’s will to survive despite the most trying of circumstances—you know, sinking ocean liners and Céline Dion concerts and such—but mostly it made the untamed cynic in me wonder how so much effort could be poured into something that inspired so little genuine emotion.