Les Anges gardiens

From the same director that "Les Visiteurs, 1993" comes a great comedy which has Christian Clavier and Gérard Depardieu as the main characters. They both perform wonderfully well. This is an excellent movie, very very funny. I personally adore french humor. The characters are great, the actors are well chosen and do divinely in the film. The plot is genius. It's a bit out of reality, but everything is so smoothly developed that for some breve moments you can almost believe that the whole thing could actually happen for real. If you wanna have a good time, don't doubt it, just go and watch it, I'm pretty sure you won't regret it.

It starts off as an action-packed comedy with overly exaggerated scenes and a typically Jean-Marie Poiré styled humor.

By the time the plot and characters are established, the movie takes a strange turn. It's such a drop it can only be explained by the image of a cliff. As soon as the supernatural entities (the guardian angels) are introduced all Hell breaks loose but it's not even a little bit of fun.

This is bad enough to leave half way through. It just drags on, completely out of puff.

Poiré must've gotten rich after Les Visiteurs and must've wanted to have a bit of fun with the money, but the result is shockingly bad. Imagine this film without movie superstars Depardieu and Clavier.

This film cam back into my hands recently as a brand new film in the budget range on a certain on line store. I took the opportunity to view it for the first time in 2 or more years.

The premise of this film (good and bad consciences coming down to earth to chastise their respective owners) via a ridiculous Hong Kong subplot, with Triads by the carload, is only really an excuse (a very good one) to exercise the talents of Christian Clavier and Gerard Depardieu. This film is most definitely one to watch in French only, I checked out the dubbed version and it is without any merit, almost as bad as the dub for Le Diner de Cons but that is another story.

Clavier is at full strength as the irritating Father Tarain ("a-i-n like Pain") and he brings his facial expressions and slightly precious voice to the character. The sequences in the ecumenical archives, in the plane and in the Chinese restaurant just make me cry with laughter. Depardieu is satisfyingly "un-Gérard-like" in this film, he seems content to have a good time and frankly this pays off in spades.

The action sequences are suitably hammy, the girls are suitable stunning (any film that packs in the entire Crazy Horse troupe, Eva Grimaldi, Eva Herzegovina and a dozen other gorgeous girls in various states of undress has obviously got a good grip on things!) and the whole package rolls along nicely. Well worth a viewing on a lazy Sunday afternoon, if only to hear "Bonjour Georges" and "Je vous présente le Père Pain" one more time. Undemanding fun, 8 out of 10.

Les Anges Gardiens is one of the few french movies that I really like. The speed is the essential characteristic of this nervous and beautifully edited picture, and turns an simple mob plot into a wild parade of fast scenes, good dialogue and lovely half-dressed dames. Unfortunately, nothing is perfect. And in this picture's imperfections are precisely the guarding angels. Not too much for the angels themselves (they are supportable) but those special effects are almost offensive!

This is one of those movies that works well and then it doesn't. The editing doesn't do the film justice even though there are a lot of good scenes that are edited well in the film. The CGI for the time is pretty good. It's just not a very good film unless you take it in parts. The actors are fine. The women are beautiful. It's just a little too big for it's britches. Perhaps they could have done a more simple story rather than attempt to take down the Triad. I don't think the original PG13 would hold up to today's standards with all the nudity, but then again, what do I know? If you're going to watch this movie, I don't recommend watching it with kids unless you can get an edited version.