I'd never heard of this film but stumbled upon references to it as "worst Canadian film ever made" (worse than "Things"?!?), comparing it to "The Room," etc., so I became curious. And indeed it is comparable to "The Room," in that it is one of those movies where you think "Did whoever who made this lack familiarity with...er, how human beings talk and think and act?" It has a similar sort of bizarre disconnectedness from reality that does not appear intentional, though at times there are indications the film isn't taking itself entirely seriously.
Rather than "The Room's" unknowingly strange take on soap-operatic domestic drama, this is more of a kind of exquisite-corpse narrative, with the college-student protagonist endlessly tumbling through one inexplicable left-field adventure after another, usually involving him getting abducted by strangers. Then he escapes, and unlike any normal person who'd go "Well I guess I should return to my normal life/home now," he shrugs "This place seems OK" and gets a job in an unfamiliar town...until he's abducted again, and escapes again somewhere else. These episodes often encompass a woman who becomes obsessed with him, but whom he must flee after a while. It makes zero sense that at the end he seems to have decided he's ready now to happily accept the love of the lying, obsessed childhood-acquaintance woman who started this chain of nonsensical events in the first place.
All this may sound like some kind of interestingly surreal, dream-like narrative. But for the most part the movie seems to have no idea what it's portraying is at all unrealistic. Some of the performers obviously realize they it is, as they occasionally appear embarrassed or flummoxed at how to play un-playable scenes in which characters go from zero to hysteria within seconds for no reason at all. Often "Ryan's Babe's" story seems propelled by little more than locations that were available, or that the director wanted to visit. (I think the geographical progress here goes from Saskatoon to the Grand Canyon.) There are entirely arbitrary bits like a strip-club sequence--you can imagine someone telling the filmmaker, "Hey, I know a guy who can dance while doing karate moves!," and his saying "That should be in my movie!," because why not.
Oddball as it is, "Ryan's Babe" isn't as entertaining as it sounds--unless you add some sort of drinking game, which would no doubt make it a riot--because the filmmaking has a sort of flavorless TV-level competence in technical terms. And also because it lacks a Tommy Wiseau--it's like "The Room" if Greg Sestero were the lead. This guy is also a perfectly decent, typically handsome actor trying to maintain his dignity in slightly abashed, faintly bemused fashion through a ridiculous script. If "Babe" had a personality at the center as singularly off-key as its writing, it would be a one-of-a-kind trainwreck like...well, you-know-what. But instead it's a very eccentric personal project whose weirdness is muffled just enough by the reasonably-professional presentation to be more fun in theory than it actually is to watch.
