Le sens de l'humour

As far as comedies go, I must admit, this one from Quebec is much funnier than many of those made in France in recent years. This movie is humorous on three different levels: the slapstick comedy bits, the hilarious set-up and its continuous action and dialogs, and also the whole plot viewed as one wholesome story.

The movie is about two comedians who tour small villages and perform their stand-up routine in different bars. And, as luck would have it, in one of those villages they made fun of a wrong person in the crowd, who then immediately set on getting his revenge. Michel Côté is simply fantastic in his role of a village thickheaded old bachelor with no charms, who eventually acquires more and more social skills and "the sense of humor", with the help of those two funny-men that he holds as hostages.

What I especially liked about this film is the precision and subtlety with which the relationships between different people are portrayed and presented: between Luc and Marco, between Marco and his wife, between Luc and his sister, etceteras. But the main feature of this movie, that makes it so great, is that all the jokes work extremely well, they are all funny and delivered with impeccable finesse and exact timing.

In conclusion, this is a fantastic comedy, one of the best I've seen in years. Anne Dorval, though her role is quite short, shines brightly, as usual. I only give the film nine stars, because towards the end, a certain plausibility of main characters' actions was missing a bit, but this did not prevent it from having a grand and astounding finale.

This movie really is about the sense of humour and another unique cinematic gem coming from Québec. It's really hard to make me laugh but this movie almost permanently put at least a little smile on my face. When I wasn't laughing I was stunned by the soft dramatic, romantic and philosophic content of the movie, the surprisingly credible and great acting, the majestic and unique landscapes or the great exploitation of Quebec's culture and language or simply the little twist in the very end.

The story is already rather original: A little and usually rather shy cook and outsider controlled by his dominant father and mobbed by the community goes to a comedy show with two comedians to change his mind but they chose him as victim and start making jokes about him in front of the entire public. The same evening, the cook takes revenge, kidnaps the two comedians and hides them in his farm. The two comedians try to win his confidence and offer him to fight the mobbing and become the star of the small and beautiful village and community. They offer him to discover his sense of humour and fight his inner demons. They want to help him becoming himself. After a few problems, mistakes and misadventures, the cook gets more and more confident and tries at the same time to impress the love of his life. But the story ends not here: How will the severe father react as he discovers the truth about what his son is doing in his back? What will he ultimately happen with the two comedians that may try to escape and call the police? How will the cook react as the police and family members of the comedians keep on looking for the truth?

Every character in this movie has a funny and rather superficial but also a profound and touching side. For the first time ever, Louis-José Houde made an excellent job and really lives his character for me. I didn't like him as a comedian and always thought that he pulled some interesting comedy movies like "Father and guns" down or played stupid and unnecessary cameo roles like in Quebec's modern action comedy masterpiece "Bon cop, bad cop". With this movie, Louis-José Houde finally convinces me and doesn't play a childish guy that is simply talking all the time but a matured and diversified character that fits him well. Benoît Brière who was rather unknown to me is a good partner in crime and has a different sense of humour which equilibrates the choice of actors in a positive way. Michel Côté shines as always and plays an insightful, solitaire and desperate psychopath. One really sees and feels that he has more experience than the other actors and uses charisma in a great way to live his character. But even most of the secondary roles who play the psychopath's father and the comedian's sister or wife fill their characters with life, creativity and authenticity and there are mostly no random one dimensional characters to find here.

The only little negative point to find is that the ending is rather predictable and also filled with the usual stereotypical scenes and that a few of the secondary actors could have merit a little bit more development as they are really less intriguing than the three main characters and their direct surroundings.

But a part of this little fact, this interesting comedy movie from Québec easily beats the well sounding names on the big screens of this cinematic summer right now and is a unique and highly entertaining movie with a great acting. It has been a long time that I haven't laughed as much as in this film and I'm looking forward for more movies coming from Quebec this year after a phenomenal and successful last year.