Lovely Rita, sainte patronne des cas désespérés (2003)

Lovely Rita, sainte patronne des cas désespérés is a French comedy thriller film first released in 2003, directed by Stéphane Clavier.  The film is based on a novel by Benjamin Legrand and stars Christian Clavier, Julie Gayet, Eddy Mitchell, Arielle Dombasle and Pierre Mondy.  Our overall rating for this film is: mediocre.


When he arrives on the Côte d’Azur, accountant Edgar Lamarck is expecting nothing more than to do some business, conning a shipyard owner, Thierry Ferrand, with an under-valuation of his business.  He doesn’t expect to be caught up in a hair-raising, death-defying thriller intrigue.  His big mistake was to go looking for some night time entertainment to round off the evening.  "Lovely Rita" turns out to be nothing like the sumptuous blonde Edgar happened to come across on the internet.  She is in fact a fiery redhead who pulls a gun on him when she meets him.  And then she insists that he, a respectable accountant, helps her to dispose of the body of a man she has just killed.  It was obviously going to be one of those nights…

An uninspired script and some complacent direction effectively scuttle this inconsequential comedy thriller more or less from the word go.  A sackload of borrowed ideas are regurgitated without any real thought and the result is about as tedious and trashy as a film of this genre can get.  The only thing more excruciating than the trite dialogue and the ridiculous plot is having to watch actors of the calibre of Julie Gayet, Pierre Mondy and Christian Clavier struggling hopelessly to make anything of it.   For a comedy, there’s very little to laugh at – apart from another embarrassing performance from Arielle Dombasle.

© James Travers 2006

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