Ma famille t'adore déjà (2016)
Directed by Jérôme Commandeur, Alan Corno

Film Review

The popular French comedian Jérôme Commandeur took time off from his day job to direct (if that's the word) this infuriatingly inept and distinctly unpleasant comedy.  He shares the directing duties with Alan Corno, for whom this is also a directing debut, although he has more experience, having worked as an assistant on several popular comedies including De vrais mensonges (2010) and Les Vacances du petit Nicolas (2014).  Commandeur and Corno inherited the film from Dany Boon, who was apparently too busy doing other things to direct it himself, although you wonder if that was his real motive for walking away from it.  Ma famille t'adore déjà is a spectacularly unfunny comedy and it's remarkable how a film with such a talented cast (including Commandeur, a fine comedy performer) could go so horribly awry.  We have grown used to seeing Thierry Lhermitte and Marie-Anne Chazel slumming it in dismal misfires by now, but what on Earth possessed Déborah François and Sabine Azéma to waste their talents on such low-grade trash?

Commandeur and Corno show next to no promise as directors, but when they have such an abysmal and completely mirthless screenplay to work with you can see straight away why they made such a bad job of helming the film.  The characters, the situations, the gags all look like something an unimaginative ten year old might have dreamed up and scribbled down in his exercise book on the bus on his way home from school.  If only the dialogue wasn't so gratingly crass, if only the acting wasn't so depressingly over-the-top, if only there were at least three or four decent gags in this ghastly ocean of vacuity you might have forgiven the film its scrappy excesses and non-stop abject puerility.  But no, Ma famille t'adore déjà is a film that has absolutely no redeeming features.  None whatsoever.

Film Synopsis

Now that he has found his ideal soul-mate, Julien, a thirty-something designer of smartphone apps, decides the time has come to end his bachelor days and get married.  Éva, a busy career journalist, is his intended bride, and if it weren't for her family the marriage would have gone off without a hitch.  Unfortunately, Éva feels it is her duty to introduce her future husband to her parents, who live in retirement on the island of Ré.  Julien does his best to make a good impression on his future in-laws, but their habit of playing practical jokes and acting like fugitives from a lunatic asylum does not make this an easy task.  Not only that, he has already got off on the wrong foot with Éva's brother, Jean-Seb.  The greatest threat to Julien's wedding plans presents itself in the form of the seductive German nurse that Jean-Seb and his wife Corinne have just engaged to look after their children...