Actor Ray Liotta with Canadian Rachel Blanchard in a scene from Bruce McCulloch's Comeback Season, which was shot in Calgary and Edmonton last year.

You can take the kid of out Canada, but you can't take the Canada (or at least its citizen's inability to brag about themselves) out of the kid.

So says Calgary-raised Bruce McCulloch, the goofy former Kids in the Hall star who, despite moving to L.A. five years ago, still lacks that "Hollywood arrogance."

And while it's certainly not a bad thing to maintain some decorum, it does make it difficult to promote your work. Especially when, in the case of McCulloch's Comeback Season, it's received rave reviews from both fans and critics.

"Canadians obviously can't trumpet themselves and just go, 'It's brilliant,' but it's oddly, sort of, crowd-pleasing," says McCulloch, who wrote and directed the film.

"People well up. They really like it."

Comeback Season, which was shot in Calgary and Edmonton and screened at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Film Festival in New York, makes its TV debut tonight on Movie Central.

The touching picture centres around the unlikely friendship between a cheating husband, Walter Pearce (Ray Liotta) and an injured high-school football star, Skylar Eckerman (Shaun Sipos).

Following a series of tragi-comic events, including Walter's office affair and Skylar's life-altering accident, Walter helps Skylar regain the confidence he needs to overcome his injury, while Skylar helps Walter get his family back.

"It's like an old-fashioned tearjerker. It was made for the right reasons and it was something everyone involved really cared about. There are important themes, I think, about forgiveness, what happens to love over time and an affair's effect on a marriage, but they are presented in a really human, touching and sometimes humorous way," says says McCulloch, who is now married with a young daughter, before adding. "Now I feel creepy."

McCulloch, 45, says Calgary viewers can expect to see many familiar places and faces when tuning in.

"Obviously I'm from there and my creative formative years were there, so it was very nice to go back and see my old friends at One Yellow Rabbit and put their faces in the movie," he says, adding the decision to film Comeback Season in Alberta was a no-brainer.

"I suppose I could have done it somewhere else, but it just felt like the film was right there. And, certainly in Toronto or L.A., you can't get 2,000 free extras to show up at McMahon Stadium."

Comeback Season airs tonight at 8 p.m. on Movie Central.

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