Joyeuses Pâques

In 1984, the "Man" is looking at a world that is changing. The socialists are shaming you to be a capitalist while drinking champagne and eating caviar. The society is turning into a never ending pit of bad faith and selfishness. In the middle of it all comes this ridiculous caricature of a men from another time whom struggles to stay afloat. One lie to hide the previous one, presenting how ridiculous these "Don Juans" are in a world where women are simply stronger.

This open the way to all the profound and sincere French humour in which the best thing to mocks is ourselves.

To sum up, if you are French and think this is isn't funny, you should replace that head of yours, so stuck far up your bottom and try what is called "Autodérision".

Qu'on me donne une mur..Que je me tape la tête dessus...Que je me suicide au mur !!!

The movie feels like a stage play at times. It is witty, funny and has great moments, (and a few disappointing scenes too). Overall great fun and a welcome break from Belmondo's "policier"/adventure comedies of the 70's and 80's.

This movie can be watched over and over again. All the actors play well with slight overacting with results in the "stage play feeling" together with the relatively few different sets.

The speed boat sequence in the opening of the film seems a bit weird and should be ignored.

Anyway highly recommended comedy from French Grounds.

Belmondo is and will always be a great actor.

Bad campy French comedy, with lots of unfanny slapstick, a lot of silliness and very few nice gags. Sophie Marceau is cute and charming in her youth, Marie Laforêt does a competent job and has a strong presence, but Jean-Paulo Belmondo is very unconvincing in the leading role, partially due his unskilled overacting and because he does not fit in that character which is a mix of Don Juan de Marco and James Bond. As a matter of fact, the whole concept of the story is not good at all.

A hilariously inveterate womanizer (Jean-Paul Belmondo) drops his wife (Marie Laforet)off at the airport so she can go away for Easter weekend. He immediately picks up a young woman (Sophie Marceau), who has just had a fight with her married boyfriend. He gets her back to his apartment and is preparing for a long weekend of hot stranger sex, but then his wife suddenly returns, and he has to make up a spur-of-the-moment story of the young girl being his long-lost daughter. The girl plays along, but this leads to a whole series of increasingly ridiculous lies and comical situations (such as when her real mother shows up).

This is an old-fashioned European comedy that tends to differ from more modern Hollywood comedies in that the protagonist does not have to be sympathetic, but can be a philandering cad or hypocritical blow-hard. Belmondo though, a legend in French movies since his seminal appearance in Godard's "Breathless", does make his character quite charming, even though he's a chronically philandering cad who tells one bald-faced lie after another. Marie Laforet is also good as his wife, who keeps a good poker-face throughout, so you're never sure how much, if any, of his ridiculous stories she is actually buying, or whether she is just torturing him for her own amusement. Sophie Marceau shows off her spectacular, nubile breasts quite a bit (mostly just to tease her lecherous much older suitor), but she also easily goes toe-to-toe with Belmondo acting-wise (as she would the next year with Gerard Depardieu in "Police"), which is pretty impressive for an actress who (if IMDb dates can be believed) was only 17 or 18 at the time.

Continental European movies at that time really specialized in wild car chase scenes that would make Hal Needham hang his head in shame, so there are a number of those kind of shoe-horned into the plot as well. Still, all the zany situations, bare breasts, and car chase footage serve to speed this comedy along, making it a pretty fun ride even it's pretty much as light as a soufflé and about as substantial. I actually kind of miss comedies like this, compared to the ones today where the main character always has to be likable (even when is he is played by Adam Sandler) and invariably falls in love and/or learns a moral lesson by the end. I suppose these old-fashioned European movies could be considered more "sexist" (as opposed to, say, "Just Go with It" and "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry"), but I don't personally buy that as even the young girl here is far more clever than the buffoonish male. This movie is mostly just a lot of harmless fun.

The film doesn't have a great script. All rely on the personal charm of Jean-Paul Belmondo, great and funny, as usual. A very young Sophie Marceau is also very charming and efficient. A not so young Marie Laforêt does what she can. Rosy Varte the same, even better, in a smaller role than Laforêt. Gérard Hernandez, small role too, the waiter from the Indian restaurant, is funny too. The music by Philippe Sarde is not great. Without Belmondo, with any other actor as the character Stephane Margelle, the film will be boring without shudder, without a charm. Jean-Paul fills the screen, he is the salt and the pepper.