French Fried Vacation (1978)

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There are two sides to this movie: superficially it is an unspectacular comedy about a group of tourists spending their two weeks at a Club Med resort somewhere in Africa, or the West Indies or wherever. There is the underlying promise of sexual adventures, but they only materialise for the bored, toned and bronzed club entertainers, not the balding and paunchy guests.Like an iceberg, the more important part of this movie is invisible, and lies in the incredibly fast-paced dialogues. It's French quipping at its best, and if you only so much as bat an eye you'll miss it. For this reason the French love this movie, and the rest of the world wonders what they're on about (this type of humour doesn't translate well or even at all). I saw an original French version without subtitles, and have to admit that most of it was too fast for me.For this reason: if you're French -- you probably have seen this movie, and possibly even on this very day. If you're not French, you won't understand a dicky bird. This review is so pointless.

This French cult movie is now available on DVD and the plus factor is that it boasts virtually all of Splendid, the theatre company who collectively wrote and acted in several landmark productions such as Le Pere Noel est une ordeure, and is a chance to see the early - it was only his second full-length film - directorial work of Patrice Leconte but the negative factor is the dubbed English soundtrack which not only misses 90 per cent of the verbal humour, for which it can't be blamed but contrives to make all the characters sound the same, as if they could only run to one male and one female and hired two dorks who were unable to speak in anything other than monotones. Even if you don't speak French or speak only grade-school French you're probably better off ignoring the dubbed option and just relish this tightly-knit group of actors-writers in their salad days - Josie Balasko, for example is barely recognizable as a size 10 - and have fun trying to locate such modern stars as Thierry Thermitte, Gerard Jugnot, Michel Blanc etc. Essentially it's a send-up of the Club Med scene and plays more like a series of vignettes than a well-made play but the rewards are there if you persevere.

A comedy centered on one week's group of tourists and the staff at a French holiday resort in Africa. Includes plenty of hijinks and sleeping around, but basically fluff.Very little is seen of the Africans, props in the movie as in the holiday camp.

LES BRONZES is an ensemble farce in the CARRY ON tradition. Except it's French. I watched this with a predominantly French audience, and was astonished at the bombardment of laughter in the first ten minutes at scenes I wasn't getting. I feared it would be that dreaded thing - a culturally-specific comedy. But, once you settle down, you can enjoy an old-school farce about desperate scrambling for sex and not getting much, stereotypes, humiliation and failure.The film is set entirely in an African holiday resort, focusing on a group of club holidaymakers and the staff. Anyone who has seen Julian and Denise's recent Sky programme will know what to expect (although this is funny) - practical jokes (staff shower group photograph with buckets of water, or steal the trunks of a clumsy dullard trying to impress the ladies), silly beach games, vaudeville-type performances, trips into the surrounding countryside, rigorous massages etc.There is no one narrative in the film, and this, in one sense, (if I may say so under IMDb guidelines) is its drawback. The lack of a coherent goal, or structure, means that the film just wanders at will, like a holiday. You can't even say the drive for sex is a goal, because we don't stay long enough with any single character to care about their adventures. The lack of form also means that amid the undoubtedly sidesplitting highspots, there are an awful lot of longueurs. The good bits lose momentum and therefore effect. Compare the ensemble films of Altman, which seem unfocused, but are actually rigorously patterned and hence impart enormous power.The good thing, though, about this diffusion of narrative focus, is that we are treated to lots of wonderful characters in hilarious situations which can just be funny in themselves, without being weighed down by the need to be relevant to plot. And if the characters are stereotypes, the actors (including future French megastars Thierry Lhermitte, Josianne Balasko and Michel Blanc), who improvised the material on stage in its original incarnation, make sure they're always alive.There's the 'modern' couple Nathalie and Miguel, whose inability to be honest with each other means that they try to sleep around against their will. There's Jean-Claude Dusse, a shy, clumsy virgin whose innocent attempts to meet women end up looking seedy. There's the doctor, wearing an offputting pair of undersized trunks, or Gigi, the beautiful, seemingly dippy girl whose every relationship seems all-consuming until the next.Then there's the staff - the serial bedder Popeye, who has a breakdown when his wife actually has an affair. Or Bobo, a former insurance clerk turned clown whose dreams of fame and women have yet to come true. Or Bourseault, the former TV star reduced to this kind of work, locked into his inane image, and observing others.Though mostly played for laughs, there is an emotional undercurrent occasionally gleaming through, in which we see the fears and failures of the various characters revealed beneath their bluster. There is a death, but this isn't used to expose the vapid decadence of this society; indeed, it is absorbed and quickly forgotten. The film ends on a glum note as the stud and the clown indulge in self-pity, but Elton's circle of life is asserted, although now we know it's dark side it seems less amusing.LES BRONZES can be seen as a kind of Bakhtinian carnival, in which ordered society moves out of normality for a period, plays out its crises and anxieties, desires and dreams, overturning social mores, before returning back to the grind. The film begins in darkened, rain-sodden chaos, as the guests run around in a blur looking for their huts, and ends in restoration, errant couples reunited, even some happiness achieved, society renewed. Except for one person, an uptight, snobbish, racist, spinsterish cosmetologist - we realise early on that her objectionable personality is only a screen for profound loneliness, and we wince with her at her failed attempts to connect. Her metaphorical banishment from the comic closure leaves rather a sour taste, and is a hint of a misogyny that, some claim, becomes more prominent in Leconte's work.