La classe américaine

This movie could be considered as the lost "Les Nuls" movie, for they dubbed some of the characters. Also, it contains the same humour as in their own movie, "La Cité de la Peur". It's a remake of Citizen Kane, but more comedy-like (much more!) This film gathers the most famous casting ever. But they didn't play in this movie, it's just a french-dubbed archive footage, and French viewers will recognize the official voices of all actors.

The plot appears to be nonsense : George dies because of an accident caused by a storm, but apparently someone tried to kill him ; Orson Welles interrupts the story to complain about plagiarism then get shot. But it doesn't really matter : You just have to enjoy the funny scenes one after another. The very humour of this film comes from the french script. Could you imagine Henry Fonda say "it's easy to call people gay because two men live together in a ranch and they wear leather trousers"? Well, it happened.

For French people and well-understanding French speaking people an absolute must see !

As said in the comment's title, I wonder why it's not well/better known...

Why not, really ?

It's hilarious, delirious, and with some quiet inoffensive slang...

So that any grown-up person who is a movies lover could almost laugh all along the movie.

The French dialogue fits completely to the expressive attitude of the actors,

with even the lips movements which could make us think it is not an invented one, but the real original English lines...

With plenty ironic light trashy permutations of the original English dialogues and meaning of the scenes.

Without knowing the movies in which the different parts have been taken and assembled,

for sure the fun can't be the same... :-(

I define myself as a wide-open movie lover, from classic to martial arts (except horror :-),

and especially comedies but I never heard about this fantastic one before yesterday,

as someone mentioned it on a computer info's sharing site, to my great surprise.

Read straight afterward the excellent reviews here on the site...

Could find it and watched it in the evening...

What a pleasure ! So many laughs ! Just perfect !

For comedy lovers : a must see !!!

Unfortunately and for once the Anglo-American speaking audience will miss this one... :-)

*** a film is never really good unless the camera is an eyes in the head of a poet Orson Welles ***

The montage of this movie is so perfect it should be serve as a reference for any cinema student. I can't imagine how long it took to the directors to write the script, select the scenes, rewrite the script, reselect the scenes again and again...The dubbing work is just amazing too. I showed the movie to some Spanish friends, and even though they do not speak a French word, they were nearly as much dumbstruck as I was! Obviously, it's no surprise acting is nearly perfect given the prestigious cast (the best ever?).

Oh, and don't forget to watch the movie several times. They are a lot of funny and subtle tricks in there.

Take a bit of El Dorado, a bit of President's men, a part of Citizen Kane, (etc.), keep the usual dubbing French voice but create another story... Unique, hilarious, perfect

I'm still wondering how Canal + may have produced such a bombshell...Producing a movie sampling so much 70s classics surely was a producer's nightmare but, hey, it was worth the pain! George Abitbol, aka John Wayne, aka the hippest man on earth, disappears leaving only a few words..."Shitty world". Reminds you of Citizen Kane? Well, that's it and this is not the only movie you'll be thinking of, as the whole movie is sampled from all-time classics, with Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford or Steve Mc Queen on his trail...You'll also have cameos of Ernest Borgnine, Jean-Michael Vincent and so on...In fact, if you happened to watch TV during the last 2 decades, you have already seen that movie, just not in that order! The work on the editing of the whole is simply brilliant, and should be studied in any audiovisual school... If you love stupid humor, irreverence and smart dumb-a$$ jokes, this one is for you!If there was a reason to learn french, this is it, as I really don't know how this can be translated... This is definitely a must-see for anyone willing whether to pee his pants, or learn french or editing.Run for it!