Film Review
Such was the immense popularity of Georges Lautner's
Les
Barbouzes (1964) that French cinemas were inundated with
daft spy thriller spoofs for the next half a decade, most massively
inferior to the now classic comedy that set the ball
rolling.
Les Malabars
sont au parfum is a middling entry in this formulaic sub-genre,
the inherent silliness of its plot redeemed by the accumulated talent
of the comedy ensemble that it throws at us. Francis Blanche
pretty well steals the film as the inept Soviet agent (a role he was
pretty well wedded to at this time in his career), with Darry Cowl (as
a fumbling Agent 001) and Henri Salvador (as an apparently lobotomised
gendarme) each bagging a fair quota of laughs on their own account.
Director Guy Lefranc specialised in popular comedies of this kind and
had a knack of keeping audiences entertained, even if the gags were (as
they are here) painfully well-worn and original ideas in chronically
short supply. After a promising first half,
Les Malabars sont au parfum hastily
degenerates into a predictable run-around as the screenwriters
methodically work their way through the schoolboys' compendium of spy
gags. It's tempting to think that the scene at the end, where a
cow is hoisted aloft by a helicopter, was inspired by Fellini's
La
Dolce vita, the statue of Christ replaced with something
just as holy to commercial film producers, a
vache à lait...
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Guy Lefranc film:
Béru et ces dames (1968)
Film Synopsis
Convinced that her soon-to-be married nephew Michel is harbouring a
dark secret, Aunt Berthe hires a private detective to discover what he
is hiding. Michel's secret turns out to be a benign one: he has
found a way to get a cow to deliver two hundred litres of milk a day,
and naturally the Minister for Agriculture is interested in his
discovery. To ensure Michel comes to no harm, the latter supplies
him with a personal bodyguard, in the form of the ravishing blonde
Valérie, and insists that he takes his impending honeymoon in
the suburbs of Paris, and not Venice as planned. It is not long
before the American and Soviet secret services have got wind of
Michel's invention and sent their best available agents to kidnap the
scientist...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.