Paul Gross stars as the Montana Kid, a U.S. gunslinger stuck in Canada, in the western comedy Gunless. (Alliance Films)

After branding the screen with a sizzling Alliance stamp and flashing a title card that reads “Once upon a time in the North,” Gunless sets about the tricky business of presenting a Canadian take on that most American of genres: the western.

There’s plenty of fun to be had in satirical westerns, but where Blazing Saddles contained flashes of inspired lowbrow madness, Gunless feels surprisingly bland.

Part homage and part spoof, the film opens on the iconic image of a lone gunslinger, emerging from the rolling hills and dust on horseback. Covered in dried pig dung and nursing a bullet wound in his hind quarters, the Montana Kid (Paul Gross) stops in a sleepy Canadian town called Barclay’s Brush, where the gruff outlaw wastes no time in challenging the local blacksmith (Tyler Mane) to a showdown.

The proposed duel sends the townspeople into a proper tizzy. Though there are some bullets on offer at the general store, no one in Barclay’s Brush believes in guns. As one character notes, there are “no dueling laws in this country. We call it murder.” Desperate to relieve his itchy trigger finger, the Montana Kid strikes a deal with a sassy local, Jane (Sienna Guillory), offering to help with some manual labour in exchange for the use of her broken-down pistol.

It’s a decent set-up, and for a few minutes, Gunless looks like it’s gearing up to explore the differing attitudes towards violence and firearms that exist on either side of the Canada-U.S. border. But after establishing the Montana Kid as an Ugly American — the cowboy greets one of the town’s Asian residents with “You speakee Englishee?” — director William Phillips retreats from the cultural commentary and opts for straight-up comedy instead.

Sight gags and pratfalls abound. At various moments in Gunless, the Montana Kid does face-plants in the dust, ogles Jane’s cleavage, brandishes a carrot in place of a gun and limps around in an oversized purple kimono top and spurs. Gross has the timing to pull these jokes off, but he can’t disguise how stale and sitcom-y the material feels. He’s left to give a broad performance, wandering around like some kind of Wild West Jack Tripper.

As fans of Blazing Saddles can attest, there’s plenty of fun to be had in satirical westerns. But where Mel Brooks’s film contained flashes of inspired lowbrow madness, Gunless feels surprisingly bland. The movie is marred by script problems — a romantic subplot is telegraphed far too early to generate much heat, and key expository information is revealed in awkward, implausible monologues the Montana Kid delivers to his horse.

Jane (Sienna Guillory) catches the eye of the Montana Kid in Gunless. (Alliance Films)

At least Gross is given a character to play. As written, the other Barclay’s Brush residents are cardboard types: the spitfire love interest, the tenderhearted Mountie (Dustin Milligan) and the three bungling townies who bear a striking resemblance to “Larry, Darryl and my other brother Darryl” from Newhart. This is murder on the actors, who all struggle valiantly to make something of their roles. Only Callum Keith Rennie, appearing as the Montana Kid’s bounty-hunter nemesis, emerges unscathed.

When Rennie’s character strides onscreen in his big black hat and announces, “I’ll bleed this town,” the actor exudes enough raw charisma to jolt the movie to life. The arrival of this Western baddie enables Phillips to get at the Western tropes he’s aiming to skewer in Gunless — the standoffs, the guns blazin’, the Clint Eastwood “This is my path, I am what I do” speeches.

But as with everything else in Gunless, the end result feels more hokey than pointed — jokes like “I thought you Canadians were supposed to be polite” never quite hit the mark. Fans hungry to see Due South stars Gross and Rennie reunited onscreen should be satisfied, but Canada’s answer to Unforgiven it ain’t — not by a long shot.

Gunless opens Apr. 30.

Lee Ferguson writes the arts for CBC News.