On voulait tout casser (2015)
Directed by Philippe Guillard

Film Review

The immense success of Marc Esposito's Coeur des hommes (2003) created a popular sub-genre in French cinema (mostly comedies) celebrating enduring friendships between men who are well into middle-age.  2015 has been a bountiful year for fans of this kind of film, with not only Olivier Baroux and Richard Berry getting in on the act - with Entre Amis and Nos femmes respectively - but also former rugby footballer Philippe Guillard, looking for an easy ride after his hit debut feature Le Fils à Jo (2011).  Guillard's On voulait tout casser is as formulaic and vacuous as any the genre has so far served up, and even the pleasure of seeing Kad Merad teamed up with Charles Berling and Benoît Magimel is mitigated by a script that takes recycling to ludicrous extremes.

The film's main problem is not that it lazily stomps over already well-worn territory with the refined elegance of a three-legged diplodocus making its way home after an all-night drinking binge, but that it feels the necessity to tag on the creaking plot device of a terminal illness and use this as the lamest of pretexts for an unseemly surge of pre-senility male bonding.  It wouldn't be so bad if the males concerned acted their age and proffered a sincere reflection on the emptiness of their existences; no, they seem to spend most of the film indulging in juvenile antics that make them look like over-aged teenagers auditioning for the latest reality TV show. The women in the film are even less well-developed than the men and could conceivably have all been replaced with cardboard cutouts without anyone noticing.  The sincerity and authenticity of Guillard's previous film are conspicuous by their absence.

The sparky cast dynamics prevent the whole thing from being a total write-off however, although the age range of the five leads (with Benoît Magimel too young to fit in) undermines the film's premise somewhat.  Some unfortunate excursions into sentimentality of the yukiest kind do little for the film's credibility and the humour is mostly on the anorexic side, so slight that you hardly notice it.  After manipulating the audience's emotions for most of the film with the deftness and subtlety of a Stockhausen recital in the early hours, Guillard ends it in a truly cringeworthy vein, with a cataclysmic barrage of cliché.  If this doesn't kill the now totally stale genre of 50-something male bonding stone dead, nothing will.

Film Synopsis

After he is diagnosed with cancer, fifty-something Kiki learns that he has only five months left to live.  On the spur of the moment, he decides to fulfil a longstanding dream, to set off in a boat and sail around the world.  When his four bosom friends - Tony, Bilou, Gérôme and Pancho - get wind of Kiki's plans they quickly realise what prompted him to attempt such an ambitious feat.  The impending loss of one member of their gang causes the five friends to reflect on their lives and wonder what became of all their adolescent dreams...