La Vengeance du serpent à plumes (1984) - film review

On the death of his grandmother, odd-job man Loulou Dupin is delighted to learn that he has inherited a large Parisian apartment.  He hastens to Paris to view the apartment, hoping to sell it as soon as he can.  He is surprised to find that the apartment is occupied by two attractive young women, Laura and Valérie.  Unbeknown to Loulou, the latter belong to a terrorist cell which is using the apartment as a headquarters for their operations.  Laura flirts with Loulou to distract him, whilst her murderous friends try – without success – to put him out of the way.  By the time Loulou learns the truth, Laura and her friends have disappeared.  Accompanied by his best friend Alvaro, a vindictive Loulou pursues Laura to Mexico.  There, he discovers that the terrorists are preparing for the most spectacular coup of their career...

Having proven to the world that he is an actor of no mean talent in Claude Berri’s Tchao, pantin (1983), Coluche appears totally wasted in this ill-conceived, badly realised Gérard Oury offering.  A pale imitation of the lavish adventure comedies of Philippe de Broca, La Vengeance du serpent à plumes is little more than series of hackneyed action stunts and madcap comic situations, assembled with the skill and dexterity of someone attempting to create a matchstick model of the Eiffel Tower whilst wearing a pair of boxing gloves.  It is scarcely credible that the film was written and directed by Gérard Oury and Danièle Thompson, the team which previously bought us such triumphs as La Grand vadrouille (1966) and Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob (1973).  Not only is the plot totally lacking in coherence (which, admittedly, is not too great a sin for a comic farce), it is also singularly unfunny – in fact, it barely passes muster as comedy.  None of the principal characters in the film is remotely believable (Coluche presumably had his hair died yellow to look like comic book hero Tintin), and its attempt to get its audience to sympathise with terrorists in the latter part of the film must have been misguided at the time, and a thousand times more so since the September 11th atrocity.  A bad film – in every sense of the word.

© James Travers 2004

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