I am a huge fan of the mini series, and a huge fan of Alexandre Astier. But this film was just horrible.
The series were funny, witty, unpretentious, had excellent rhythm. There were a lot of characters but in a given episode, you'd only have a few.
Now in the movie, you have all those characters, plus many more, and it becomes a boring soup & a pretentious mess. Christian Clavier somehow wanted to be part of this, and he's incredibly irritating as usual with his one trick pony act; it's just sad now. Presumably, each original character has a few lines to say so that nobody would feel left out, but from a story / script / movie perspective, it's just bad.
Now the story itself couldn't be duller. To a large extent, even, it makes no sense. Some elements are even frustrating. It's very hard to relate to anyone. Arthur is a anti hero, and not a likeable one. In a comedy, the anti hero surrounded by idiots was funny. Here though, every character pretty much sucks and it's depressing.
Astier is a musician, so the score was very important to him, but it completely overwhelms the movie in several instances. It makes no sense to play a Hans Zimmer type score in a movie filled with village idiots.
The costumes were completely over the top: again, a distraction.
Overall it feels like the budget was too high. The set of the mini series was limited, and the focus was on the writing and story. Here, you got fancy images, music and costumes that felt completely out of place and sync. Just felt wasteful.
I think I smiled 2-3 times and laughed once or twice, and the rest of the time I was wondering how much they spent on it, and whether they will finance the next installments. I wouldn't.
I think we can all happily just rewatch the series and not try to make an epic hero movie out of the least hero material characters imaginable.
The series were funny, witty, unpretentious, had excellent rhythm. There were a lot of characters but in a given episode, you'd only have a few.
Now in the movie, you have all those characters, plus many more, and it becomes a boring soup & a pretentious mess. Christian Clavier somehow wanted to be part of this, and he's incredibly irritating as usual with his one trick pony act; it's just sad now. Presumably, each original character has a few lines to say so that nobody would feel left out, but from a story / script / movie perspective, it's just bad.
Now the story itself couldn't be duller. To a large extent, even, it makes no sense. Some elements are even frustrating. It's very hard to relate to anyone. Arthur is a anti hero, and not a likeable one. In a comedy, the anti hero surrounded by idiots was funny. Here though, every character pretty much sucks and it's depressing.
Astier is a musician, so the score was very important to him, but it completely overwhelms the movie in several instances. It makes no sense to play a Hans Zimmer type score in a movie filled with village idiots.
The costumes were completely over the top: again, a distraction.
Overall it feels like the budget was too high. The set of the mini series was limited, and the focus was on the writing and story. Here, you got fancy images, music and costumes that felt completely out of place and sync. Just felt wasteful.
I think I smiled 2-3 times and laughed once or twice, and the rest of the time I was wondering how much they spent on it, and whether they will finance the next installments. I wouldn't.
I think we can all happily just rewatch the series and not try to make an epic hero movie out of the least hero material characters imaginable.