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Not a great short, but worth watching for a glimpse of a very young Jacques Tati, and for an interesting look at a French rural village in 1936. Jacques Tati's mannerisms are funny, but underutilized. He could have gotten a lot more mileage out of some of the situations. I had one really big laugh, but the rest of the film was just pleasantly amusing. The editing is very crude. It kinda felt like the editor held up the strips of film in one hand and scissors in the other and eyeballed it. Either that, or there were some frames lost to decomposition or something. 7/10 is probably being a little too generous as far a pure entertainment value, but that's what I'm going to give it, because it's a fascinating piece of film history.

"Soigne ton gauche" is a great surprise thanks to to artistic direction by René Clément, but I think you have to be french to appreciate in big laughs all the farm context and characters. As in "Gai dimanche", there are some early Tati's future gags and characters, like the postman François from "l'Ecole des facteurs" and "Jour de fête". In the 30's, Tati did a lot of music hall shows imitating funnily sportsmen, from tennis to boxing. Here Tati tries boxing as an amateur facing a brutal champion, he learns on the ring improvising from a book. This short has fast paced editing so gags are also very fast for spontaneous laughs.

A very young-looking Jacques Tati provides some good moments in this generally amusing early feature. The overall style of the comedy (which was directed by René Clément) is somewhat different from Tati's own, but with some hints in his character of things to come.

The simple story has Tati's character working on a farm when he meets a boxer who is in training nearby. The early parts are pleasant, if a little slow, but when Tati gets in the ring with the boxer, the pace starts to build up quickly, leading to a madcap climax. It makes fairly good use of the opportunities, and it is particularly funny to see Tati's character keep trying to refer to the boxing manual. It's a good gag, and not an easy one to pull off that smoothly.

No one would compare this with Tati's best features, but it is a solid comedy with some good laughs. If it had been a Hollywood short comedy of the mid- to late-1930s, it would probably have been a little above average.

Pretty Funny.I saw this on Criterion´s M. Hulot's Holiday DVD.It is very inspired by the boxing scene in City Light.This short film is of course not as good because that is one of the funniest(or best) scenes in film history.It´s hard to rate short films but if I should rate it I give it a 4 out of 5.

Wow, Tati was a young man. Here he plays someone's young son, 17 years before M. Hulot's Holiday. The action centers around a boxing match between a champ and Tati, who knows nothing about boxing and has to consult a manual during the fight. It sounds funnier than it really is. Chaplin's boxing match in City Lights is much, much better. The editing of this film can be confusing. Still, it is funny. It's worth a 7/10. See it on Criterion's M. Hulot's Holiday DVD, recently released.