Up For Love (15.)
Directed by Laurent Tirard.
Starring Jean Dujardin, Virginie Efira, Cedric Kahn, Stephanie Papanian, Cesar Domboy and Edmonde Franchi. French with subtitles. 97 mins
Brought to its knees by industrial action and the National Front growing in popularity – is France still living in the 70s? On the evidence of this its sense of humour definitely seems stuck there. At the start of Up For Love, beautiful lawyer Diane (Efira) is waiting in a cafe for the man who has found her lost phone when Alexandre, a four foot seven inch version of Oscar winner Dujardin turns up and pops himself up on the chair opposite her. And that's the whole joke. The film even takes a pause waiting for audience hilarity to calm down.
Up For Love is a film about a short man that doesn't have a short man in it; and a slick romantic comedy that only has one joke and it isn't remotely funny. He's supposed to be about chin high to Ronnie Corbett but the methods used, mostly practical rather than digital, to make Dujardin look short are ineffective and about as realistic as those used in Little Britain for the Dennis Waterman sketches. He doesn't look like a man who lacks heights, but rather a man born out of proportion with the rest of the world, like he'd chickened out and jumped ship shortly after the shrinking ray started in Fantastic Voyage; or he's materialised on a parallel earth, identical to this one in every way except it's 25% larger scale. There's something creepy about it, like some of the old man baby images of Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button. It's no doubt offensive too – I don't know what the size equivalent of black face is
If this was a Hollywood film it would feature an assortment of Wayans and be low brow and crass, but because this is French it carries itself like this is all terrible sophisticated and witty. The humour though is embarrassingly broad – there is a big dog that knocks him over every time he comes home, people treat him like a little child. There's something egregiously hypocritical about the way film makes out it is about the small mindedness of the people who laugh at the two of them together, when that's what the film is asking us to do.
The film wants us to sympathise with Alexandre, but he is a bit of sly one, possibly to a creepy degree. First he tricks her into meeting him sight unseen and then before she can adjust he's whisked her off in an airplane to go skydiving. They never have any standard dates, it's always a mysterious adventure and whenever she feels a bit hesitant about their relationship he guilt trips her. The film's only redeeming feature is Efira, a TV presenter turned actor who is a relaxed and charming screen performer – she's like a nice, likeable version of Katherine Heigl.
She can't save this though. If this is what gets into French cinemas (and ours) what are they watching on French TV? Dans Les Buses avec Jean Rochefort? Gerard Depardieu as Selwyn Frogit?
Up For Love (15.)
Directed by Laurent Tirard.
Starring Jean Dujardin, Virginie Efira, Cedric Kahn, Stephanie Papanian, Cesar Domboy and Edmonde Franchi. French with subtitles. 97 mins
Brought to its knees by industrial action and the National Front growing in popularity – is France still living in the 70s? On the evidence of this its sense of humour definitely seems stuck there. At the start of Up For Love, beautiful lawyer Diane (Efira) is waiting in a cafe for the man who has found her lost phone when Alexandre, a four foot seven inch version of Oscar winner Dujardin turns up and pops himself up on the chair opposite her. And that's the whole joke. The film even takes a pause waiting for audience hilarity to calm down.
Up For Love is a film about a short man that doesn't have a short man in it; and a slick romantic comedy that only has one joke and it isn't remotely funny. He's supposed to be about chin high to Ronnie Corbett but the methods used, mostly practical rather than digital, to make Dujardin look short are ineffective and about as realistic as those used in Little Britain for the Dennis Waterman sketches. He doesn't look like a man who lacks heights, but rather a man born out of proportion with the rest of the world, like he'd chickened out and jumped ship shortly after the shrinking ray started in Fantastic Voyage; or he's materialised on a parallel earth, identical to this one in every way except it's 25% larger scale. There's something creepy about it, like some of the old man baby images of Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button. It's no doubt offensive too – I don't know what the size equivalent of black face is
If this was a Hollywood film it would feature an assortment of Wayans and be low brow and crass, but because this is French it carries itself like this is all terrible sophisticated and witty. The humour though is embarrassingly broad – there is a big dog that knocks him over every time he comes home, people treat him like a little child. There's something egregiously hypocritical about the way film makes out it is about the small mindedness of the people who laugh at the two of them together, when that's what the film is asking us to do.
The film wants us to sympathise with Alexandre, but he is a bit of sly one, possibly to a creepy degree. First he tricks her into meeting him sight unseen and then before she can adjust he's whisked her off in an airplane to go skydiving. They never have any standard dates, it's always a mysterious adventure and whenever she feels a bit hesitant about their relationship he guilt trips her. The film's only redeeming feature is Efira, a TV presenter turned actor who is a relaxed and charming screen performer – she's like a nice, likeable version of Katherine Heigl.
She can't save this though. If this is what gets into French cinemas (and ours) what are they watching on French TV? Dans Les Buses avec Jean Rochefort? Gerard Depardieu as Selwyn Frogit?
