Joel Santoni begins his career with a movie which deserves to be rediscovered :"Les Yeux Fermés " (=with eyes closed) dealt with a blind man's ordeals in a cruel world;after a documentary about a cycler champion ;things begins to deteriorate beyond that point :"Les Yeux Brouillés" exploited a French President's fancy for scrambled eggs but got unanimous thumbs down .
"Ils Sont Grands Ces Petits " hits rock bottom,despite an intriguing prologue ,with an excellent scene :scientist Yves Robert asks his daughter to go to bed :she demands a bedtime story ,and he reads her an extract from a calculus book dealing with sine curves and parameters.
This is the story of the aforementioned girl,Louise , who grew up to be a scientist herself and of her childhood friend ,Léo ,who enjoys scale models ;a nasty estate developer who has a luxury apartment block ,"La Traviata " in mind wants to throw them out of their property .
The eventful screenplay includes a new way of holding up banks , a robot ,Manfred ,closer to Roby from "foridden planet" than to those of "star wars" , the obligatory wealthy emirs -a recurrent theme of the French cinema of the late seventies/early eighties,-
Catherine Deneuve is by no means a comic actress ;both she and Claude Brasseur must have considered this dud a potboiler.Claude Piéplu could be riotously funny when he was given good parts (Miller's "La Meilleure Façon De Marcher " and both films with Bunuel).
Fortunately , Joel Santoni' s following effort "Mort Un Dimanche De Pluie" , was much better and is to be recommended;but not this one.
