Hollywoo (2011) - film review

Jeanne is the French dubber for Jennifer Marshall, an American actress who stars in a hit television series.  When Marshall goes off the rails and decides to give up acting, Jeanne fears that her own career may also be over.  Her only hope is to head off to Los Angeles and try to persuade the disillusioned star to go back to her day job.   Jeanne’s Hollywood adventure gets off to a bad start, until she meets Farres, who offers her a far more glittering future than she could ever have imagined...

Florence Foresti and Jamel Debbouze, two of France’s best-known comedians, singularly fail to hit it off in this lacklustre comedy, which feels less like a film and more like a string of (mostly unfunny) sketches haphazardly strung together.  Despite the evident enthusiasm of the two central performers, Hollywoo just fails too get off the ground and instead of offering an amusing Frenchman’s view of Hollywood it is content merely to churn out an endless succession of gags that are well past their sell-by date and which rely almost exclusively on well-worn (and slightly offensive) stereotypes.  The film proved to be a hit in France, attracting an audience of 2.3 million (such was the lure of the Foresti-Debbouze billing), but is unlikely to have any impact abroad.  After the success of her recent one-woman shows, Foresti ought to have done far better than lend her name and her talents to this limp, completely unsophisticated comedy.

© filmsdefrance.com 2012

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?