Dave Foley delivers Canadian-style box office return for American movie

Publicity for the Kids in the Hall reunion mini-series Death Comes To Town, premiering on CBC Television in January, has had the accidental effect of drawing attention to Dave Foley’s unfortunate 64th screen credit of this century: The Strip, an indie workplace comedy about a low-end electronics chain store in Chicago called Eletrici-City, which creeped into eight American cinemas a week ago. Total opening weekend gross: $5,107. Foley plays the shop manager, Glenn, a character presumably not unlike his four-season gig on the sitcom NewsRadio — although director Jameel Khan looks to be working the Desi angle with an arranged marriage subplot. “Could Dave Foley prostitute his talent to amuse any further without actually becoming a prostitute?,” sniped Nick Pinkerton of The Village Voice. Based on the unflattering reviews for this hybrid of The Office and The 40 Year-Old Virgin, there’s not much hope for Foley’s future as a second-string Steve Carrell. Not even fluff-feeding publicists could spin a good story out of The Strip, though — best they could offer was an anecdote about a concrete slab from a patio umbrella shattering Foley’s big toe: ““When we were shooting the movie and every time I was walking I was re-breaking all the bones in my toe because you’re supposed to stay off it. But they were very nice to me. They had a wheelchair for me to sit in every time I wasn’t on camera and I would put my foot on ice. Even today it still hurts sometimes.”