I thought I had hit the absolute rock bottom of French industrial cinema with "Le gendarme et les extra-terrestres".
I was wrong.
"Le gendarme et les gendarmettes" hits record lows and, contrary to past Louis de Funès bummers, it's not even funny from a "small, unpretentious, low-budget comedy" point of view.
The script is awful. The acting is awful. The editing is awful.
It's racist, it's sexist, it's patriarcal, it's 90 minutes of cultural appropriation as every other "Gendarme" entry and Louis de Funès screams all over the place to try and make you smile to no avail.
Actually, this has always been the problem with de Funès: he wanted his films to be an excuse for him to act. He said so himself: he chose, towards the end of his career, to limit himself to films directed by Jean Girault because he's "only a technician" who butchers his films to let de Funès shine on screen. De Funès acted in 2 films by Édouard Molinaro and swore never to be on set with him again because Molinaro works on all aspects of his films equally.
So, if you still wish to go on with the latest entry of the most successful franchise of B movies, brace yourself for characters that change names midway, troops that change grades midway, a computer that "guesses" you're a hypocrite, a black intern "troop-ette" who does an African dance, another intern "troop-ette" who loses her skirt "by mistake" and 50 cars that collide because a third intern "troop-ette" decided to do a Bollywood dance with an old male troop with a molester smile.
I was wrong.
"Le gendarme et les gendarmettes" hits record lows and, contrary to past Louis de Funès bummers, it's not even funny from a "small, unpretentious, low-budget comedy" point of view.
The script is awful. The acting is awful. The editing is awful.
It's racist, it's sexist, it's patriarcal, it's 90 minutes of cultural appropriation as every other "Gendarme" entry and Louis de Funès screams all over the place to try and make you smile to no avail.
Actually, this has always been the problem with de Funès: he wanted his films to be an excuse for him to act. He said so himself: he chose, towards the end of his career, to limit himself to films directed by Jean Girault because he's "only a technician" who butchers his films to let de Funès shine on screen. De Funès acted in 2 films by Édouard Molinaro and swore never to be on set with him again because Molinaro works on all aspects of his films equally.
So, if you still wish to go on with the latest entry of the most successful franchise of B movies, brace yourself for characters that change names midway, troops that change grades midway, a computer that "guesses" you're a hypocrite, a black intern "troop-ette" who does an African dance, another intern "troop-ette" who loses her skirt "by mistake" and 50 cars that collide because a third intern "troop-ette" decided to do a Bollywood dance with an old male troop with a molester smile.