When people tell me that the Toronto International Film Festival tries to do too much, I laugh and laugh. Exactly which number (the press office loves numbers; it scatters them about like confetti) is too high? The 326 films culled from 2,600 submissions? The 54 countries that are offering films, including 115 from Europe and 32 from Asia? The $8-million that festival-goers leave behind? (No store on Bloor Street objects to that one.)

Naysayers claim that the buying and selling of films at the market doesn't complement the screening of them for the public. But tell that to director Kathryn Bigelow, who sold her feature The Weight of Water at the market here last year, largely on the strength of the festival audiences' response.

Before Bigelow screened Weight here, several Hollywood studios had turned it down, because it was about relationships too complicated to fit into a tidy tag line on a poster. But Toronto loved it, and swarmed Bigelow after every show - especially and unexpectedly, insensitive-looking burly guys who are devoted to her huge action movies. Lion's Gate saw that, and bought her film. (Now they just have to release it.)

Tell that to Jill Sprecher, the director of Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (it's her second feature; her first was the clever Clockwatchers) who, like many other filmmakers, is hoping the same thing happens to her this year.

My favourite complaint, though, is that the festival is just too American. Yes, these kvetchers kvetch, there may be films from Kazakhstan and Afghanistan and Albania, as well as 27 Canadian features. (Bet you won't see 27 Canadian films this whole year.) But they're overshadowed by Hollywood stars and commercial films.

To which I say, boo hoo. Quit being so . . . Canadian about it. Instead of bemoaning American excess (plenty of time for that during the rest of the year), let's unclench our tidy buttocks and, for 10 days, revel in it.

Anyone who has ever been to the film festivals in Cannes or Venice or Sundance will tell you that Toronto is far better organized, more accessible, cleaner, saner and blah blah blah. Our impeccable Canadianness is intact; we don't have to worry about that this week. Instead, let's not only let our hair down, let's muss it up and dye it green.

Really, do you honestly mind that Denzel Washington is going to be strolling around Yorkville for a couple of days? That Sissy Spacek, Stockard Channing or Julianne Moore might be spotted having a cocktail at the Four Seasons bar? That for a short string of nights in the middle of September, you'll waste a few minutes watching gorgeous people walking down red carpets, waving? Is your life really so serious?

I happen to love American films. Wait, let me clarify that - I want to love American films. I want them to be as good as they are good-looking. I want them to be as ambitious as they are expensive; I want their stories to be as well told as they are well marketed.

I want them to be about more than just one idea at a time. (Note to Tim Burton: Yeah, your apes looked cool. But that alone is not enough to carry a movie. They actually have to do something interesting as well.)

I want to see something that looks as fresh as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did last year, instead of the parade of pale imitators that I'll have to sit through now that Crouching Tiger made $125-million (U.S.). Think I'm exaggerating? The other day I saw three trailers in a row for films featuring "Hong Kong choreography" - fighters flinging themselves through the air on invisible wires - including The Musketeer, surely one of the most unnecessary movies ever burned into celluloid.

The festival gives me the kinds of American films I want. Some fall short, some fail. But, by and large, the American films that show up here, both commercial and non-, are the ones with some heart and ambiguity; the ones that aspire to be not simply different for difference's sake, but deeper; the ones that feel as if they have something urgent to tell me.

Festival director Piers Handling says that the general themes he spotted in this year's entries include nostalgia, especially for the Second World War era; personal loss; and anger, specifically, angry young people from dysfunctional families. I'll see all that this week, eagerly. The festival is a great place to get depressed, in an inspired sort of way.

But don't hold it against me if, to rest my eyes in between the art, I also want to gaze upon Steve Martin and Steve Zahn, John Dahl and John Cusack, Matthew McConaughey and Meat Loaf. Nicole Kidman speaking Russian in Birthday Girl? Christina Ricci fighting with Jessica Lange in Prozac Nation? Mira Sorvino, David Arquette, Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi at Auschwitz in The Grey Zone? Bring it on.

In today's ultracommercial climate, part of sending intelligent American pictures out to the world involves a passle of celebrities sashaying into Roy Thomson Hall or holding court at chummy press conferences or filling up the pages of this and other newspapers with their extra-shiny selves. At least Toronto gives them their best chance to say something faintly thoughtful and out of the ordinary.

Bring it all on. An embarrassment of riches? Great. Embarrass me.