Quasimodo d'El Paris

Loosely based on Notre Dame de Paris, this film is really a fantasy about normality - what is beauty? what is truth? what is right? what is wrong?... and who really must decide on this? Richard Berry (Frollo)turns in an incredible performance as the guardian/parent of a severely deformed Quasimodo, whose real wish is not to be handsome but to have a cool sports bag. SHow this film to anyone who has a handicapped child in the family and they will soon be dissolving in laughter ... and in tears. The cruelty of the "normal" world is depicted by the Governor and his wife who at birth gave up ugly Quasimodo in exchange for beautiful Esmeralda. In the same vein handsome Phoebus is really just a vain skirt -chase trying to marry into power by courting the Governor's daughter. As Esmeralda finds out, "normal" people are physically beautiful, but their stupidity, greed, and ambition makes them repulsive, compared to the gentle Quasimodo. This is an upside-down world where the good are bad, the beautiful are ugly, and the ugly also are ugly but in the end does it matter? Add a touch of Thelma & Louise when Frollo and Quasimodo decide to leave Paris for a ride in a fantasy country which is mixture of France, Spain and Florida. Sprinkle with some references to the Rocky Horror Picture Show and you have a highly unusual, hilarious, movie.

This is definitely an uneven movie. At the one hand I liked the concept of the movie and it also was quite funny and original to watch, while at others the movie was being incredibly lame and even somewhat annoying.

It was definitely fun and interesting to see a modern take on the 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame' story, that very loosely still follows the Victor Hugo novel. The movie came up with some good original and fun stuff at times but it at the same time also made some very odd choices. For instance what was with the whole weird sexual type of relationship between Quasimodo and Frollo? It are these sort of odd decisions that also makes this a really bad movie to watch at times and makes you go; WHY?!

The casting was not that great either. Both Patrick Timsit (who also directed the movie) and Mélanie Thierry, as Quasimodo and Esméralda, mostly annoyed me, though on the other hand Richard Berry as Frollo was quite good and enjoyable. It's of course not just due to the casting or actors but also the script and dialog itself aren't always that great or clever, so sometimes some of the characters seem lacking.

A bit of a fun fact about this movie; even though it's a French production with of course some very French characters in it and a classic French story, the movie got entirely shot in Portugal. It was probably because filming in Paris can be a real pain and probably is very expensive as well. They most likely also couldn't get permission to film in- and outside of the Notre Dame, so they did a search for a church that looked similar enough and that's how they eventually ended up in Portugal. Most of the people watching this movie probably won't even notice but I have to say that while watching this movie I never got a French vibe from its atmosphere and environments. And I now finally learned why that was the case.

I still laughed and thought it was a funny movie for most of the time, so despite all the criticism I can still somewhat recommend it, though obviously not wholeheartedly.

6/10

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It's sad to see that such a film has been widely mistaken with a "non funny comedy" in France and elsewhere. Timsit maybe managed to make the first french comedy in a "ZAZ" style, which is very unusual in french cinema. Gags in the back of the scene, stupid dialogues told by very serious actors... does it remind you of something? Richard Berry as Frollo reminds me a lot of the way Leslie Nielson plays his characters in "Airplane" or "The Naked Gun": deadly serious and absurd at the same time! I think that the film loses a lot of its impact when dubbed in English or subtitled, principally because the dialogue is full of french slang. The screenplay is very close to the original novel by Victor Hugo, and it's surprising that a pure comedy may be the best adaptation of the "real" story of the Hunchback. I think that this movie will stay in the hearts of french ZAZ and Saturday Night Live fans as one of the first examples of a "french American humor mix".

For those who don't know him, Patrick Timsit is a French actor (comic at first). "Quasimodo d'el Paris" is his first movie as director. And what a movie! Even if we can't watch the movie without thinking to his admiration for the "Monty Python", we must admit that he realized here a really funny and especially particularly original movie. Well done.

QUASIMODO, a very free version of THE NOTREDAME HUNCHBACK tries to be black comedy, and if it not succeeds is mostly because it uses stupidity of some characters to generate laughs. The story is particularly poignant (and a little racist too). Due to his ugliness (and bad luck), the son of the Paris governor is given his rich family, to avoid scandal, to a very fundamentalist priest. To replace him, they kidnap a nice Cuban girl, who grows up as a rich daughter of the family. Fifteen years later, a psycho is killing prostitutes, and a sub-normal chief of police, is making absurd assumptions on the killer.

Due to unexpected circumstances, the now 20 years old girl (whose real name is ESMERALDA but the rich family call AGNES) finds out that QUASIMODO is the real sibling from the family and tries to repair the damage, but creates a situation were the chief of police ends blaming everything on the hunchback.

On the other hand there is the priest (Richard Berry), a sin obsessed masochistic, who seems to be the only person who cares and protect the poor deformed guy.

If you are looking for a Disney moralizing tale, look elsewhere. The main characters are not likable at all; and the main one is not really very normal or intelligent either. Even when he declares his love to AGNES / ESMERALDA is just because SHE IS PRETTY but that is. This movie has a very dark sense of humor (the beginning is hilarious) but sadly is replaced to many times for cheap slapstick or mere unfunny jokes or monologues. It seems that the director was not sure what type of audience was targeting and makes a complete loss of good actors like Berry, who creates a complex character as the killer priest.

The movie was a promising directing debut by PATRIC TIMSIT (also Quasimodo), but is far from a good or even really funny movie.