Un indien dans la ville

Gee, I guess I should be embarrassed, but I liked this movie. It's sort of an ultra-lightweight comic version of François Truffaut's "Wild Child"...the adults are appropriately silly, the boy is a charmer, the girl is cute, the climb of the Eiffel Tower is pretty spectacular and the movie ends well for everyone. The Russian bad-guys and some of the treatment of animals (birds!) make the movie a little heavy for young kids, but overall the film is far more effective than the Disney remake, where the boy is too old and the adults don't really make much sense, even for a comedy.

When it was released in the United States, "Little Indian, Big City" received a lot of brutal reviews; critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, among others, declared it as one of the worse movies they had ever seen. Is the movie really one of the worst ever made? No - it isn't aggressive in its badness as the worst movies out there. But all the same, it's still a pretty bad movie. It's biggest problem is that it's not the least bit funny, with juvenile gags that even kids won't laugh at. But it's also incompetent in its execution, with scenes that seem to be missing or key footage in scenes that are there missing. It doesn't help that the English dubbing is badly done, making the characters speak in awkward English in an attempt to match the lip movements. The American remake of this movie ("Jungle 2 Jungle") is an improvement - but not by much.

I have watched this film over and over again, it makes my whole family laugh everytime. You have to know something of the way the Parisians live and be able to understand French pretty well to 'get' most of the jokes. The Americans tried to make a copy - Jungle to Jungle' and like so many other copies of French films it was terrible.

Learn French - watch this movie - Laugh loudly.

Oddly, this movie made me remember of Poiré's movie "the visitors". It's nearly the same topic and the story is told in a comedy style: the presence of a character (here, it happens to be a young Indian) in an unknown universe for him. Obviously, he'll come to turn upside down the living conditions of a few people (like Thierry Lhermitte). Otherwise, it's just a nice but flat comedy. Anyway the result was effective because success was on appointment. And Hervé Palud's movie had the merit of having interested the USA because three years later, an American remake was launched. When you think about French comic movies that are rather badly thought of, it's nearly an achievement.

So, it all comes to this, you struggle trying to write one short screenplay and pray God it catches the interest of anyone, only to discover that some filthy pieces of lazy writing like "Little Indian Big City" can count on it, granted they have the budget, and the right casting. It's in moments like this, that I wonder if Cinema isn't the most hopeless art, business industry … whatever you call it.

Anyway, to start this review on a positive note, do you remember that scene in "Wayne's World 2", when asked if he could see him, Rip Taylor said "Of course, I can. How are you going to miss a half-naked Indian?" Well within the film's screwed up logic, he made sense. Except that "Wayne's World 2" is a parody so even if he couldn't see the Indian, it would have hardly affected the film. But "Little Indian Big City" isn't a parody, it's meant as a comedy. And even in a comedy, you know there's something wrong when a half-naked little Indian walks on Paris' streets without being noticed. You know there's something wrong when the extras mix up 'behaving normally' and 'not paying attention to something strange in front of them. And you know there's something really wrong when a boy can climb the Eiffel Tower, and no visitor, no agent, no tourist, no policeman intervenes. Was he that invisible?

And the sequence was supposed to be the culmination of the film, the defining shot: the boy from Amazonian Jungle discovering the Urban Jungle (an overused plot device since "Tarzan"), the sequence even features the song from a French reggae artist, teaching us to follow 'our own roads, our own dreams, our own destiny'. I know it's inspirational but for God's sake, it's not a pilgrimage, the film just want to climbs the giant-arrow-picking-the-butt-of-sky? And why nothing happens after? The sequence has no pay-off, it doesn't make you laugh, not even think, it's a well-shot scene but … purposeless. The scene illustrates what is wrong with the movie; it's a no-brainer with no other purpose than filling the screen with obligatory clichés, where the only novelty is that these clichés serve a French movie, for once. It's a French film that tries to be American, a syndrome that really poisons French Comedy.

Maybe you'd think, I'm being too cynical, maybe the film isn't my cup of tea because I'm not on the right target of a well-marketed film. Wrong, I was 12 when the film came out, I'm of the kid's same generation, I was supposed to enjoy it. Yet for some reason, the first time I saw it, I couldn't stop thinking: "could have it tried harder to be American?". It starts with Thierry Lhermitte as an arrogant and cocky businessman who comes to Venezuela to ask his wife (Miou-Miou) to sign the divorce papers. He's guided to the camp by a talkative local guy and when Lhermitte can finally leave him, he shout a loud "Shut up!" and God, that wasn't funny at all, that was embarrassing. One weak punch line isn't like the best omen to heighten your expectations. So Lhermitte goes to the camp and discover he has a son, who talks indigenous French, like in comic-book movies "me want to" "me do". Apparently, his mother isn't much of a teacher.

To make it short, Lhermitte sympathizes with his son, discover his worlds made of unfriendly small and big creatures, a tarantula, crocodiles, snakes, the whole zoo is there and we're supposed to laugh at Lhermitte getting face to face (with a zoom effect that fools no one) with a crocodile. Ha ha ha. This is not me, IMDb reviewer talking, but the kid who saw the film, and if it ever had a merit, it was to awaken the inner critic in me. Anyway, like in "Crocodile Dundee", it's Mimi-Siku's turn to discover Lhermitte's world, his annoying colleague played by Patrick Timsit, and his no-less annoying fiancée, Charlotte (Arielle Dombasle) a broad so dumb and stupid I wondered if both wouldn't end up married at the end, smart, wasn't I? It's like all the clichés ever existing in movies have been thrown there, without any attempt to elevate them. The film met with popular success, but I know why, only little children can laugh at the film, and naturally, they can't come to the theater, alone.

Enumerating the bad scenes in the film is an impossible task. If I had three in mind, it would be Lhermitte's worst acting ever when he discovers his boy brought up the tarantula at his office, so embarrassing, a weird running gag involving an old neighbor who's not funny and the house's janitor who's not better. And last but not least, guess what, the colleague has a daughter, and guess what, she and Mimi fall in love. So quick, so fast, c'est beau l'amour! And I love Ebert's comment that the boy is cuter than the girl, I wonder if she's still acting now by the way. So, the plot goes on and on, the kids leave, Lhermitte realizes how tough it is to be a father, and finally, he decides to give his divorce a second thought, yadda, yadda, all is well that ends well, etc.The film is one of the worst piece of marketed movies for success, exemplifying one of the worst evolutions of French Cinema in the 90's.

Indeed, with the exception of "The Visitors", the high budgets and special effects allowed many directors to loosen up and make movies the American way, so badly that they stunk more than their own remakes, which is saying a lot. "Jungle 2 Jungle" recycled the same plot but there was a goofiness in Tim Allen that proved that he found the right tone for the film, "Little Indian" was pathetic in its attempt to be funny, and only laughable when trying to be serious.