From Les Boys to Seducing Doctor Lewis, Quebec's homegrown comedy hits have had nearly as much trouble finding audiences in the rest of the country as English-Canadian movies do in general. But like Jean-Marc Vallée's C.R.A.Z.Y., Ricardo Trogi's Dodging the Clock boasts slick production values, an eagerness to please and considerable smarts, all of which should widen the movie's appeal beyond the province's borders. Especially impressive is the manner in which the broad comedy of the early scenes -- and a cutesy prologue that presents its characters as actual Neanderthals -- narrows into something far more ruthless.

In Trogi's follow-up to his road-movie hit Quebec-Montreal, three thirty-something buddies cope with the challenges of family life, as well as the question of whether it's worth procreating at all. Seb (Jean-Philippe Pearson) is a permanently exhausted new father, Paul (Pierre-François Legendre) is a father-to-be who's obsessed with achieving one last sexual conquest and Fred (Patrice Robitaille) will do anything to avoid his pals' fate, including dosing his girlfriend's drinks with birth control pills.

What could've been an overextended episode of The Mind of the Married Man takes a darker turn as the ramifications of the guys' actions become clear. Co-writing the script with his Quebec-Montreal collaborators Pearson and Robitaille, Trogi subverts his film's TV-ready slickness and easy laughs by gradually turning the table on his characters. Anglo dudes don't need subtitles to recognize themselves in these rampant (and hilarious) displays of assholism.