L’Américain is a French film comedy first released in 2004, directed by Bruno Amestoy and Patrick Timsit.  The film stars Lorànt Deutsch, Thierry Lhermitte, Émilie Dequenne and Doud.  It has also been released under the title: The American.  Our overall rating for this film is: very poor.


Francis Farge, a 28 year old divorcee, decides to start a new life – in America.  When he is refused a visa to settle in the United States, he appeals to a lawyer, Eddy, to help him realise his dream.  If he can’t go to America, Francis decides he must bring America to him.

With three mediocre over-hyped films under his directorial belt, Patrick Timsit throws himself headfirst into the nadir of cultural oblivion with this bargain basement comedy, one of the most deplorable French films in over a decade. It’s hard to find anything good about this celluloid trash – the concept is ill-conceived, the plot seems to revolve entirely about a French adolescent’s caricatured view of the American way of life, the characters are idiotic cartoon-like creations, and the end product is just an amazingly bad jumble of half-baked ideas, a film that has absolutely zero entertainment value and even less artistic merit.  Why do French film producers think there’s a market for this kind of puerile nonsense?

© James Travers 2007

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