Rick Mercer: "Take Action" Figures
2019 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Stephen Dunn
In a satirical toy shop sketch, a mother and child hunting for superhero figures find only politically themed Rick Mercer action figures promoted by an earnest shopkeeper as inspiration for Canadian youth.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A sketch that weaponizes Canada's most aggressively earnest cultural export—turning Rick Mercer himself into absurdist merch—is exactly the kind of self-aware, consensus-proof subversion that shouldn't work but absolutely does; it's a premise only a contrarian would greenlight, and Stephen Dunn executes it with the deadpan precision of someone who knows exactly how uncomfortable that earnestness makes us.
The film sits comfortably in the Canadian sketch comedy tradition while executing a surprisingly sophisticated meta-commentary on celebrity, nationalism, and consumer culture; its formal restraint—the toy shop setting, the perfectly-timed reveals—demonstrates an awareness of how satire functions best when it doesn't announce itself.
The entire mechanism hinges on the shopkeeper's unwavering sincerity in pitching Mercer figures as genuine inspirational tools, and that single performance choice—the refusal to wink—transforms what could've been a throwaway gag into something genuinely unsettling and sharp.