Ah! Si j’étais riche (2002)

Ah! Si j’étais riche is a French film comedy first released in 2002, directed by Gérard Bitton and Michel Munz.  The film stars Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Richard Berry, François Morel and Héléna Noguerra.  It has also been released under the title: If I Were a Rich Man.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Aldo is a modest salesman with mounting debt problems.  Things take a sudden turn for the worse when his wife, Alice, walks out on him and starts to have an affair with his new boss, Gérard.  Then Aldo wins a fortune on the lottery.  To prevent his wife from getting her hands on his new-found wealth, he decides to conceal this fact until after their divorce…

Having scripted the two popular Vérité si je mens films, writers Gérard Bitton and Michel Munz made their directorial debut with this unashamedly commercial French film comedy.  Despite a few promising script ideas and an attractive cast, the film doesn’t achieve its full potential, and the lack of ideas in the second half is painfully noticeable.  Still, the film is entertaining, with several well-realised and very funny comic situations (although in retrospect most of the jokes are somewhat obvious and a few are actually rather offensive).  The lead actors (Darroussin, Tedeschi and Berry) are clearly worth much more than the material they are lumbered with, but, despite this, and the stereotypical casting (sympathetic loser, sad female loner and nasty womaniser... again), their contributions give the film the colour, weight and energy that is lacking in the script.

© James Travers 2005

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