Film Review
Cyprien has to be just about the silliest and most pointless
Jekyll
and Hyde rehash that has so far been committed to celluloid. It's
effectively a lazy remake of the classic Jerry Lewis comedy
The Nutty Professor
(1963), but with none of that film's entertainment value and with all of
its irritating qualities. It's just a dreary dumb comedy that tries
desperately to be funny and ends up looking about as funny as an outbreak
of bubonic plague in an orphanage.
This atrocity was directed (if that is
le mot juste) by David
Charhon, and the fact that it his first feature is glaringly apparent in
just about every second of its life-sapping 100 minute runtime. Charhon's
background is in making advertising films and video games, and you can probably
guess that from the film's eye-slapping visuals, which give it the look and
feel of an overdone TV ad for a well-known brand of - well, whichever commodity
you care to name. Having cut his teeth on this debut disaster, Charhon
would go on to have much greater success with his next film, the far superior
De l'autre côté
du périph (2012).
Cyprien's main failing is that it lacks a sympathetic central character.
Even more so than Jerry Lewis's hideous portrayal in his film, Élie
Semoun is nothing more than the most abject form of caricature - you get
physically sick of looking at him within five minutes. Why Semoun didn't
tone down his performance to make his character more sympathetic and believable
is hard to fathom. He has already shown himself to be a very capable
actor - in such films as Philippe Collin's
Aux abois (2005) - but here is
just the worst kind of comedy grotesque, even more unbearable than he was
in
L'Élève Ducobu
(2011).
The rest of the cast - which contains some remarkable talent - is equally
ill-served by this film. Catherine Deneuve at least appears vaguely
convincing as the regal head of a fashion magazine, but Laurent Stocker and
Léa Drucker look as comfortable in this film as the Pope would be
in a Parisian brothel (well, the present Pope at least). Even if Semoun
had been minded to try a more subtle approach rather than resort to the most
egregious imitation of a computer geek it is hard to see how the film could
have managed to be much more than the crudest form of entertainment.
The screenwriters are obviously working to the assumption that the film's
audience has an aggregate IQ in the low teens, and the director seems to
be pathologically incapable of differentiating humour from the most annoying
kind of silliness.
Cyprien isn't content to be merely bad -
it is completely unbearable.
© James Travers 2016
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Cyprien may be in his mid-thirties but he remains the timid adolescent, addicted
to computer games and constantly mocked by his colleagues at the fashion
magazine company for which he works as an IT technician. He spends
all of his life with computers but inwardly he pines for the woman of his
dreams. What chance does a geek like him have of getting off with the
adorable Gina McQueen, his ideal soul mate? When Cyprien loses his
job it looks as if he has lost everything. But then he lays his hands
on a deodorant that magically turns him into a cool dude that no woman can
resist. It looks as if Cyprien's dreams are about to come true - but
there is a catch. His transformation is only temporary...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.