OSS 117: El Cairo, nido de espías

OSS: 117 (2006)

I wish for a couple hours I was French, because I'm sure there were twice as many gags as I could get as an American reading subtitles. Even so, what a funny funny movie. It's not quite as zany as a spoof like "Airplane" (nor quite as funny, which of course is hard to do), but it takes the Sean Connery vintage James Bond film model and really does a parody worthy of 007. And of the franchise, which of course is bigger than Bond, bigger than Ian Fleming could have ever dreamed.

But hold your horses--this is a parody of the real OSS:117. Yes, a French author created a Bond-like spy in the 1950s, and this movie and its 2009 sequel are really playing a double-edged game. They bring the old French spy to life (the original was a French-speaking American, bizarrely enough), and they make fun of him, of Bond, and of 1960s super slick sexist movies all around.

The star here, the Sean Connery of this spoof (he even looks a bit like the Scottish actor), is Jean Dujardin. He's brilliant. He's funny, campy, silly, serious, and subtle about it all. He plays the role with a kind of oblivious self-ridicule that Woody Allen and Peter Sellers were so good at. It's great stuff.

And he's backed up by a strong, if somewhat predictable, assortment of international thugs, beauties, and oddballs. There are shades of "Charade" here as well as the original "Pink Panther" movies. The scoring is amazing, composed with that Henry Mancini flair to a T and recorded with the familiar bright, echoey sound studio fullness of the time. Equally authentic are the opening credits, which were so convincing I had to double check when the movie came out. I was thinking, wow, a lost 1960s gem.

But it's a brand new gem, or almost gem. Time will tell if this will hold up over the years, but it's a kind of must-see now for anyone into Bond films, the 60s, French humor, or just a well made movie with lots of gags. Like the gag where the noisy chickens go silent when the lights go off, and so our hero delights in turning the lights on, and off, and on, and off. Just wait and listen. It'll slay you.

This is probably one of the best French movies I had seen in a very long time! This "pastiche" or parody of spy movies is very well made and is going to make you laugh from the beginning to the end. Some references to today's world are very subtle. The whole Maroccan context of the movie is to be understood in light of today's French culture/environment. That said, all the jokes and - seemingly - shocking remarks that could have been understood as such because of this context, are permitted and accepted because this is a parody.

I was told by my sisters who had already seen this movie that I should go too and assured me that I was going to have a great time, and indeed I had! If you liked the old 007 movies with Sean Connery and also like movies like Airplane or Hot Shots, you will be delighted. I just hope this movie is released on DVD in the US... Wait and see.

I just saw this film last night, and I have to say that I loved every minute. If taken in the spirit of a parody of Bond-esquire films, it's truly superior. The true comedy of the film is in its blatant disregard for political correctness. The misogyny, cultural insensitivity, and almost laughable macho-ism of the films of this genre are used for major comic effect. It also calls the illogic and formulaic elements to task, with Agent OSS 117 constantly learning difficult things insanely quick (such as Arabic and how to play a traditional instrument) while missing some pathetically obvious clues. Some of the lines from the film left me laughing for hours after the movie was finished...and I have to say I have learned some...interesting...French vocabulary that would probably have my Professors quite exasperated with me were I to use. All in all, I thought this film excellent. Intensely funny and the first film I've ever seen that truly parodies all aspects of the spy film.

I recently saw this at the 2007 Palm Springs International Film Festival where it ended up as one of the audience favorites. This is a spoof on the french cottage industry of OSS 117 films of the 50's and 60's. The first OSS 117 film based on the novel by Jean Bruce was brought to the screen in 1956, long before the first James Bond film, staring Ivan Desny as Hubert Bonisseur De La Bath and six subsequent action adventure spy films were made up to 1970 with Luc Merenda, Frederick Stafford, Kerwin Matthews and John Gaven all taking turns as Oss 117. Jean Dujardin is in the title role in this comedic take on the series. As the film begins set in 1945 he has a french mustache and resembles Desny but as the film begins it's setting of 1955 he really looks like Sean Connery. Jean François Halim wrote this hilarious screenplay of a spy sent to Egypt to investigate the murder of a friend. It borrows on the silliness of Naked Gun, Get Smart and the Pink Panther and uses fresh humor on current events in a delightful combination that international audiences will enjoy and I am sure this will be the only the first of more to come of a revived OSS 117 reworked to comedy adventures. Michel Hazanavicius directs. I would give this a 7.5 and recommend it.

Just saw the movie, it's actually pretty good. The trailers'd left me an impression of either yet another Dujardin one-man-show-turned-film (à la _Brice de Nice_) or an expensive, stupid French comedy. Surprisingly, it's neither. Secret agent OSS 117 is stupid, but at least he sort of knows it, whereas I've always found that James Bond was stupid but acted like a smart arse. Dialogue is witty with a lot of tongue-in-cheek humour that one would expect from a British rather than a French movie. The women and the music are beautiful. A refreshing trip into the past, when the bad guys were ex-Nazis or Soviet brutes, cars were shiny, and France had colonies!