TELEVISION

JOHN DOYLE

04/27/2001

The Globe and Mail

Lost in Las Vegas (Sunday, A&E, 9 p.m.) is a new, trippy documentary from Paul Jay, the man who made the award-winning Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows.

This one follows two Canadian impersonators of the Blues Brothers as they arrive in

Las Vegas, audition for the Legends show (which features impersonators of music

legends) and determine whether they want to move permanently to Vegas. Wayne

Catania and Kierron Lafferty are good as Blues Brothers replicas (one points out,

early on, the irony of two Canadians impersonating actors who play fictional figures

in a town devoted to the fake) but they're also earnest family men and, as they

traipse around meeting showgirls and musicians, family is always on their minds.

They ask everyone if Vegas is a good place to raise children and some people just

smile. The documentary tells a good story in a relaxed manner and allows the

piquant details to emerge casually. One guy explains to the Canadians that the

mobsters who used to run Vegas lived in the city and put something back into the

community. Now, it's faceless corporations who own everything and they couldn't

care less.