Les Sous-doués (1980) - film review

The Cours Louis XIV, a small college in Versailles, has acquired a notorious reputation and attracts only the least able of students, as the constant steam of exam failures testify.  The headmistress, Madame Jumaucourt, decides enough is enough and institutes a new regime to ensure things change for the better.  Her latest set of hopeless students are unimpressed by constant surveillance of their lessons, smoke detectors in the toilets and physical brutality at the hands of the sadistic gym instructor.  However, their scheme to get their own back only lands them in deeper trouble.  Arrested for blowing up their school with a bomb, the students are given one last chance: work hard to pass their end-of-term exam or else go straight to prison...

What it lacks in artistic merit and originality, Les Sous-doués just about makes up for in visual jokes and comic momentum.  Like many of Claude Zidi’s films, it achieves what it sets out to do, which is simply to entertain.  Admittedly some of the comic situations are laboured and repetitive, but there are some delightfully funny moments and, overall it makes an entertaining – albeit intellectually barren – piece of Gallic cinema.   The magnificent Michel Galabru puts in a typically faultless comic turn, whilst a fresh-faced Daniel Auteuil starts to make his mark, easily outshining his young co-stars.   The popularity of this film (now regarded as a cult classic) resulted in an equally zany sequel: Les Sous-doués en vacances.

© James Travers 2003

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