Les Bronzés 3 - amis pour la vie (2006)
Directed by Patrice Leconte

Film Review

Despite a severe mauling from the critics, Les Bronzés 3 was the big event in French cinema in 2006, achieving a spectacular sale of 10.4 million tickets, putting it comfortably into the top ten of the most successful French films made to date.  The reason for the film's popularity is not hard to see - it marks the eagerly awaited reunion of L'Equipe du splendide, the café-theatre troupe who shot to fame in the mid to late 1970s, appearing in films such as Les Bronzés (1978), Les Bronzés font du ski (1979). and Le Père Noël est une ordure (1982), all of which have become enduring cult classics of French cinema.  The unique collective talent of L'Equipe du splendide is borne out by the fact that virtually of all its members have become household names in France, achieving huge success as actors and filmmakers.

Les Bronzés 3 picks up from where we left off 27 years ago, with the motley ensemble of holiday lovers and incorrigible skirt chasers showing absolutely no sign of slowing down into a peaceful and dignified old age.  Some of the faces may look older (although some appear remarkably unchanged), but it is the same collection of misfits with anger management and libido problems that we first met in the late 1970s.  And the film is directed by Patrice Leconte, the director of the first two Bronzés films, who has since earned international recognition as a filmmaker.

So does the film, yet another sequel-cum-nostalgia-fest, live up to expectations?  The short answer to that is no, but it does deliver a reasonable quota of laughs, for all its faults.  The problem with the film is that it doesn't add anything beyond what we saw in first two Bronzés films, and in fact the jokes aren't anywhere near as good as they were in those films.  If the first two films were a mouth-watering Chrismas Day dinner, this would have to be the reheated leftovers to be endured on Boxing Day - the same ingredients, but somehow far less appetising.  Worse, much of the humour in this film is horribly clichéd and dated - you almost feel, watching this film, that you have stepped back in time nearly thirty years, to a time when crude jokes about facial disfigurement, homophobia, breast enlargements and self-obsessed men obsessing over their biological function were considered funny.  The script - written by its cast - is the weakest element of this film, clearly the worst that Leconte has had to direct, but luckily it isn't so bad as to kill the film.

The script is mediocre, Leconte's direction uninspired, but France's best ensemble cast comes to the rescue and captures some of the anarchic fun of the original Bronzés films.   The collective talent of so many great comic performers - particularly Gérard Jugnot, Michel Blanc and Josiane Balasko - makes this a far more entertaining and appealing film than it deserves to be.  If the film makes you laugh it is more likely to be in response to one of Jugnot's mad comic improvisations than anything in the script.   Definitely not a patch on the first films of L'Equipe du splendide, but the real pleasure of Bronzés 3 derives not from the film itself but from the joy of seeing so many familiar, well-loved faces together again after such a long time.  Friends reunited, remembrance of things past, and a strange longing for the lost uninhibited zaniness of the 1970s...

Film Synopsis

Little did they know that when they first met up during their Club Med holiday in 1978, Bernard, Gigi, Nathalie, Jerôme, Popeye and Jean-Claude were set to become friends for life.  For the past few years, they have made a habit of meeting up every summer on the island of Sardinia.  Here, the friends stay at a luxury hotel owned by Popeye and his seductive wife Graziella Lespinasse, who happens to be one of the richest women in Italy.  Not content with marrying into wealth, Popeye is still chasing after every attractive young woman that comes within his sights.  Bernard's main preoccupation is the news that his son Benjamin is about to get married.  He's in for a shock when his son's life partner turns out to be a man. 

Jerôme intends using the holiday to patch things up with his ex-wife Gigi, so he is understandably taken aback when he learns that she has started a relationship with Jean-Claude, the one-time inadequate who now successfully runs a chain of hairdressing salons in America.  Jerôme gets another nasty surprise when he runs into one of his former patients who still holds a grudge against him for beauty treatment that went somewhat awry.  These worries are soon eclipsed by a far greater threat when Jean-Claude falls foul of a mysterious clawed beast.  Once again, the Bronzés are heading for yet another holiday from Hell - and it might well be their last...