OSS 117: Alerte rouge en Afrique noire

Good movie, very well acted. Good James Bond parody. It's a bit crazy but unfortunately not enough crazy. It could have been a perfect comedy but it seems that fear of sounding racist and sexist keeps screenwriters, dialogue writer and filmmaker from really taking over more crazy. And this fear is gone to last for years.

It's not awful and it can extract 2 or 3 smiles.

But what a difference with the first two installments. The wit is lost. It's often boring and most jokes fall flat.

5 is a generous rating.

As always Hubert is very funny.

However if you except Jean Dujardin all the other characters are grotesque.

For the first time the country and the epoque are not really at the center of the story.

Here you are just following the mains characters in their adventure.

In short I would say it was fun to watch but no more...

Third installment of the OSS 117 saga; the first one took place in the late fifties an showed "the hero's perfect mastery of the muslim world "; the second one,a precise spoof on the "serious " OSS 117 of sixties eurospies,the likes of "furia à Bahia pour OSS 117" set Hubert against the exiled Nazis and showed his "perfect knowledge of WW2".

Then this one , set in a precise moment of French politics :1981, A few months and Giscard D'Estaing would disappear (President Bamba's royal present won't be lost on French people who lived through the seventies) .

The world has changed ; Hubert Bonnisseur de la Bath hasn't ;he's still a, condescending ,ignorant ,dumb , uneducated ,vain, and ,to crown it all ,homophobic macho .

Jean Dujardin is true to from ,and he's probably the best contemporary comic actor (like the great ones,he can also take dramatic parts);with a lesser talent, this could have turned in one of those crude feel good froggy comedies ;he escapes unharmed .

He gets good support from Pierre Ninney ,as OSS 1001 (because the Deuxième Bureau runs out of three-figure designations) ; this young arrogant pretty boy shows himself better than his elder -which is not hard to do-,and ,which makes the matters worse , a rival with women! (a thing that even Bond never ran into); not only Hubert botches his collaborator's job in a shameless way,but he makes him believe he's got the brains although he only mutters "yes yes " " I know that" "that's what I wanted to say" ;and when the young Turk realizes Hubert has led him up the garden path and says that he 's got all the time in the world, it's too late (to skim pebbles can be dangerous!)

Of course ,it's uneven ,and one wishes the feminist side (in spite of the unexpected twist) had been more exploited ,but the numerous gags (some puns may be lost on a non-French audience) :

-Hubert depicting the Africans, then improving his knowledge by reading Hergé 's "Tintin au Congo"!

-His condescension towards the servants ,the natives , an ironical put-down of politically correct people

• "The lion does not know my gun isn't loaded " ,my favorite line.

Given the chilly reviews it met with, we won't probably be granted a fourth installment and it's too bad ; it's not for highbrows , it's not food for thought ,but balderdash! Dujardin ,the only AA winner French actor -among four ,including three actresses-,is not chopped liver!

Now I could be referring to Bond and OSS117 or I could be referring to the new member of the OSS team (1001). Or maybe both of course. But let's be clear, this movie does not care if you are offended - something that I would like to believe the Bond movie would not agree with. They tried to let the character grow - for better or worse. And whether the viewers liked what they saw or they didn't.

OSS on the other hand - he remains ignorant, sexist and racist. And yet Jean Dujardin fills the role with such an amazing performance and charisma, you kind of feel for the guy. Even when he says the most horrible and cringe worthy things - and believe he says quite a lot of those. You will not find just a few reasons to be offended here.

Apart from immature jokes, there are some political jokes too though. The role of France as colonials, but also Politicians of the 80s and communism ... you may not feel that they did the best job in handling certain themes, but you at least might want to give the movie kudos for even tackling them ... and while it does not reach the heights of the first two movies (it's been 12 years already since Part 2 came out?), it still is more than a solid movie right here. Still haven't watched the older OSS movies ... gotta push them up my watch list.