No wonder the French like Jerry Lewis slapstick. The subtitles they see in his films shown in France must be like the actual dialogue of this homegrown attempt at a verbal rendering of the same kind of meaningless nonsense. Add a little skin, a little "confusion des genres," a little mad racing around, and some highly implausible courtroom and backroom high jinks, and you have something close to what the Marx Brothers might have done had they been inclined to do it in drag with some R-rated messing around.
I know enough French to appreciate some of the scenes in which everything is made up of non sequiturs and oblique angst, especially those between Alain and Laurance. There is a degree of cleverness that has a certain appeal. But the actors cannot even at their best overcome a plodding direction of a script that probably reads better than it looks on screen.
Once again comes an example of the maxim that in comedy, timing is everything. Add to that the usual caveat that much can be lost in translation.
I know enough French to appreciate some of the scenes in which everything is made up of non sequiturs and oblique angst, especially those between Alain and Laurance. There is a degree of cleverness that has a certain appeal. But the actors cannot even at their best overcome a plodding direction of a script that probably reads better than it looks on screen.
Once again comes an example of the maxim that in comedy, timing is everything. Add to that the usual caveat that much can be lost in translation.