Mauvais esprit (2003) - film review

Failed architect Simon Variot confronts unscrupulous businessman Vincent Porel, accusing him of stealing his design for a state-of-the-art building.  Minutes later, Simon is dead, run over by Porel, who is distracted by the imminent birth of his son.  Simon is surprised to find himself reincarnated, as the baby son of the man who killed him.  Monsieur Porel’s life is about to become Hell as Simon seizes every opportunity that his new life presents to take his revenge…

If this film has any merits, it’s hard to see where they may be lurking. The ludicrous plot might be forgiven if it weren’t for the fact that the comedy is so badly handled. The idea that a new-born baby is thinking like a full-grown adult is funny for about five seconds; after that it feels like an excruciatingly bad joke. Things aren’t helped by the ensuing torrent of chauvenistic, racist and homophobic references, spoken by characters who cannot start a sentence without the word "putain" (the French equivalent of the "F" word). And then we are invited to laugh at Thierry Lhermitte changing an industrially soiled nappy (not nice if you happen to be eating a bar of chocolate at the time). How can anyone even imagine that this has any entertainment value? From that point on, the film’s authors have clearly run out of ideas and so fall back on that good old fashioned standby of fart, vomit and burb gags, while the plot (if you can call it that) just goes absolutely nowhere. I’m sorry folks, but this is just bloody awful.

© James Travers 2006

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