Meu Pai Herói

"Mon père ce héros" is a quote of Victor Hugo, the most famous French poet of all time. And although the movie is very realistic, kind of true-to-life situation, it is full of poetry. It shows one more time that Love is a big awkward thing for everyone. It is a very nice comedy, rather funny and moving. The movie helps to realize the gap existing between a father and a 14-year-old teenager. All the actors (not only Depardieu And Marie Gillain) are sincere while the main subject is "lies" !! I deeply recommend you to see this film and not its remake - a bit too tasteless (actually the dialogs are exactly the same). However, if you want to spend a good time in front of your telly, I believe Mon père ce Héros to be the perfect choice.

I actually saw this two summers ago in China, I saw a chinese dubbed version, but it was good nonetheless. The first thing to love about this movie is the theme soundtrack that it starts with. I've been trying to get a hold of it ever since. If anyone can help me, please email. Anyway, I loved the movie. Even though a lot of jokes probably got lost in the translation, I still enjoyed the movie very much. It's a very charming film, one of the best foreign films I've ever watched (and I watched a lot of good foreign language films, from Stalingrad to Au revoir les enfants) The dad is truely great in this movie, he puts up with so much, my dad would kick my ass for 1/100 of that. Veronique is great too, not many people have the guts to pull somethign liek that off.

I actually discovered that there were two versions of this film, both by the same director, both including Gérard Depardieu, but in the first one, most of the actors are French and it is set on the Isle of Mauritius, and the second, the characters bar Depardieu are mostly American and the film is set in the West Indies or Bahamas but not Mauritius. Why make two films with the same plot ? I just don't know.

In my opinion, the better of the two was the first one which is set in Mauritius. Unfortunately, this one is NOT available on DVD and the other IS !! I bought the DVD, thinking I was getting the FIRST but got the SECOND ! Very confusing, especially when the main actor is the same person.

I preferred the characters in the first film and found it funnier..but that is of course just personal judgment. I was also pleased to see shots of Mauritius which is a lovely place. In the first film, Depardieu was speaking French, his native language, in the second he was speaking English ......he was obviously less at ease in the humorous situations !! To understand this you need to be able to speak French and, more important, heard Depardieu get irritated in his mother tongue. It's indescribably funny and cannot be translated into another language. That's what I think clinches it for this first of the two films !!

We love the movie and so do Australian high school students of French! Could you please let us know how to purchase the original DVD version (in French), preferably Region 4 so that we can watch it here? I am a French teacher and the old video copy that I have of this wonderful, fun and, as the students say, "cool" film is getting more than a little worn out. It is wonderful to see Mauritius which appears to be really beautiful in the film. I could easily enough purchase the American version but no thank you....the French one is so unreal. We love the story of the teenage girl coming to terms with the situation her parents are in as well as her first fling with a boyfriend. We're desperate to purchase this film on DVD!

After brushing up on my French for a few weeks, I decided to brave this movie without English subtitles. I own a copy of the 1994 remake and know it like the back of my hand, but just to make sure I'd have the dialog practically memorized, I watched it the night before. Luckily, for the first half of the movie, the French and English version of My Father the Hero are nearly identical! The mother-daughter squabble in the apartment, the voicemails on a faceless girlfriend's machine, driving up to the hotel in a jeep and complaining that the guests are all old people, the moon going behind a cloud after he yells at her to come outside and look, forbidding her from dating musicians, the thong bathing suit, the older man at the bar offering to photograph her-as you can see, the list is extensive. I was able to understand everything they said until the last twenty minutes, and even then, I was able to piece together words, phrases, and context.

Gérard Depardieu stars in both, as the father of a fourteen-year-old girl making the transition from girl to woman via the discovery of her hormones. While on a tropical vacation, Marie Gillain develops a crush on a local boy, and thinks pretending she's with her boyfriend instead of her dad will impress the older kid. I know, the premise is a little sick, but if you can take it for what it is-a comedy-you'll be fine.

Except... the 1991 original isn't a comedy. Yes, the water-skiing scene is still in there, and the "You have a daughter?" sequence is the same, but this version is a drama. Because of the very slight, but very crucial change, I didn't end up liking the movie, while the remake remains one of my favorites. The story is about a young girl first discovering romance who makes a gigantic mistake by lying and pretending she has experience when she hasn't. Once she confesses what she's done to her father, he's livid, but he agrees to go along with her lie-hence the title. The movie is called My Father, the Hero, not My Father, the Bad Parent. At the end of the movie, you're supposed to think he did the right thing, bonded with his daughter, and helped her transition out of adolescence with grace and courage. At the end of this movie, I thought the exact opposite. One small example of the difference: the closing lines of both films are exactly the same, but in 1994, Gérard laughed, and in 1991 he cried.

I'd recommend sticking with the Disney version. It's far more uplifting, and it greatly improved the story. With such an odd premise-pretending her dad is her boyfriend-you're going to need a total laugh-fest to get through it, and the original just makes you depressed.