The film is well acted, no doubt about that. Auteuil, Berry and Lhermitte know their jobs. It is easy on the eyes, as the apartment the 3 men cavort in has luxurious Parisian chic written all over it (the scenario is from a play, so the action tends to remain within that one apartment). But the actors are cavorting on a script that badly reeks of vacuous French bedroom farce circa 1950 (though it is a 2015 script.) And there is a huge white elephant floating in that room: where are the women? The wives/women in the title are barely seen at all, and when seen, they turn out to be nasty clichés: one is catatonic and might have 3 words of dialogue in all, another one is a hysterical shrew with no logic to her character, a 3rd one seems very keen on marring a man with whom she -yet- fights all the time and has little in common. (a 4th one, the daughter, trades medical school for a pregnancy with an unknown boyfriend by the end of the story. Really?) That the ending of this film offers, as a sunny conclusion, yet another pregnancy to solve the problem of a clearly terrible match between 2 of the protagonists is downright grotesque. Even a 19th century boudoir play is more realistic than that. (see Feydeau, see Labiche). So, is this comedy funny? It starts well, and has some good scenes and witty dialogue between the men. But it chokes half way through on its plate of stale ideas. To summarize: it is ancient comedy with no life left in it. I say: the women of the title deserve better script writing. And it is sad good actresses have to take demeaning parts like these to make a living.
