The concept of dumb fun might seem pretty straightforward, but what does it mean, really? Does it signify the stuff that stupid people like, or is it guilty-pleasure entertainment for people who normally go for headier things? Fake wrestling and monster-truck rallies, let's face it, are just plain dumb, but a movie about talking beavers and alcoholic aliens? Well, the jury's still out on that one.

Newcomer Rob Stefaniuk wrote, directed, and stars in this no-budget entry into the not-too-competitive category of cheesy '50s sci-fi that got made a half-century too late. Between last year's Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and this, it's hard to choose. The other got the kitschy, science-is-the-new-God reverence of the era just right, but it wasn't very Canadian, was it?

Stefaniuk, who resembles a roughly hewn offspring of Mike Myers and Dave Foley, plays a shape-shifting extraterrestrial who crashes somewhere in rural Ontario and all too quickly adjusts to the local Norms. And Gords. And Gingers. (Okay, the last reference is to a two-dollar hooker who "likes fun".)

"Filthy alien!," cries the local lad, Joey, who discovers him in his bipedal crustacean form and eventually just calls him Phil. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but every time I saw this kid, played by the monotoned Brad McGinnes, I kept thinking of Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry. Or maybe that's because the kid's father (beak-nosed Boyd Banks) is so determinedly anti-emotional that he does most of his expressing with a shotgun. Or maybe I was distracted by the fact that many of the characters were drunk and prone to stupid acts of violence.

Mainly, though, no reference point is too tangential for the movie's randomly assorted parade of gags, spoofs, and set pieces, most of which are funny only in an I-can't-believe-they're-doing-that kind of way. Consequently, a third-act attempt to elevate events by having Phil hailed as a new messiah-and backed by a local bar band in the bargain-doesn't have quite the solidifying effect the filmmakers might have been looking for. (And, in any case, that development was better handled in the Australian Bad Boy Bubby.)

On the other hand, hosers and hosettes looking to spend time with surly bartenders (Graham Green), talking beavers (the voice of Joe Flaherty), fur-coat-wearing American spies (John Kapelos and Jason Jones), and sultry hit women with bad accents (Nicole de Boer) are advised to dumb down no further.