Screenwriter Michael Sparaga wants Canadians to see his new film Sidekick so strongly that he and director Blake Van De Graaf (along with the two lead actors) are personally taking it across the country.

"What a crazy idea!" Sparaga says.

What's crazy is how hard Canadian filmmakers have to work just to get their films into theatres. But Sidekick is far from your typical Canadian film.

In its synopsis, it sounds more like a winning screwball comedy in the vein of Judd Apatow's 40-Year-Old Virgin than Canadian fare like Atom Egoyan's abstruse and prosaic cinematic meditations.

Sidekick tells the story of Norman, an unassuming computer nerd in Toronto who discovers that Victor, a co-worker, has superpowers. Norman then embarks on a crusade to help the reluctant and morally questionable Victor develop into a bona fide superhero. Felicia's Journey, it isn't.

"I don't want people to see it as a Canadian movie, but just as a superhero movie that people can dig," says Sparaga.

Sparaga financed the production of the film himself, with the help of credit cards and a surprise personal line of credit from the Royal Bank.

"I feel like the credits should read, 'inadvertently brought to you by the Royal Bank of Canada,' " Sparaga says.

After well-received screenings in Toronto and an official World Premiere at the 2005 Calgary International Film Festival, it appeared that Sidekick would go the way of most Canadian indie movies.

Oblivion.

"The only offers Canadian distributors were giving me were straight-to-video or The Movie Network or a CHUM sale," Sparaga says. "So it was straight to TV or DVD.

"I understand that. There's no precedence of a Canadian indie movie ever really finding success in a theatrical release. English-speaking Canadian movies don't really make these people money, so I didn't really expect anything different, no matter how good a product I came up with. They buy Canadian movies because they need a certain amount of Canadian content.

"But I didn't want to see Sidekick die yet."

So, with funding from Telefilm Canada, Sidekick began an eight-city tour of Canada.
"It seemed like the most logical thing to do -- until we actually got on the road driving towards Halifax," says Sparaga. "We started thinking, 'What the hell are we doing? What if nobody shows up?' "

But people have shown up, occasionally in droves.

"People are laughing, and getting it," Sparaga says. "We get dozens of e-mails asking us to bring the movie to places not on this tour. We're gathering steam with the media and the fans with every screening."

One of the keys things audiences seem to glom on to, according to Sparaga, is the subtle Canadian character of Sidekick.

"We keep hearing, 'Oh, thank God you're not just pandering Canadiana at us,' " Sparaga says. "It's not just a bunch of beavers in a Tim Hortons singing 'O Canada.' It feels like Canada is very interested in seeing itself onscreen in genre movies, in romantic comedies, action films. I think Torontonians and Edmontonians would rather see themselves depicted onscreen instead of having to watch Just Friends."

Just Friends, of course, is the recent romantic comedy starring Ryan Reynolds as an L.A. bigshot forced to face his past when his plane is stranded in New Jersey. The role of New Jersey was played in the film by the city of Regina. Sparaga wonders why the Queen City couldn't have played itself.

"Why not Regina? I don't think Just Friends would have made a cent less or a cent more if it had been set in Regina . . . Regina's not better than New Jersey? Come on!"