This French farce is described by its producer as reminiscent in tone of Blake Edwards’ The Party and Jerry Lewis’ films. In his dreams, maybe.
The film’s writer, director and star Emmanuel Mouret is no Peter Sellers, or Lewis or Edwards. Here he plays a doofus whose quest for a fling sanctioned by his live-in girlfriend results in an embarrassing visit to a party hosted by the President of France.
Mouret’s Jean-Jacques is an inventor of utterly useless things such as a magic marker for drawing moustaches. He tells his paramour Ariane (Frédérique Bel) about a friend who picks up women at will by sending them rather prosaic notes. He confesses he slipped a note to a woman he saw in a café as an experiment and she invited him to a party. Ariane urges him to go, using the dubious logic that the liaison won’t mean he’s cheating on her if she knows about it beforehand.
He demurs, but goes to the party anyway and discovers the woman, Elisabeth (Judith Godrèche), is the daughter of the President (Jacques Weber) and the bash is in the Elysee Palace in his honour. Elisabeth scarcely knows Jean-Jacques but introduces him to her father and guests as if he’s her long-time beau. Que?
There follows a lot of lowbrow, physical humour as the hapless fellow gets his finger stuck in an antique vase, encounters a burning toaster, drops his mobile phone into an ornate toilet, and confuses a mannequin for a woman and vice versa. The best sequence sees him getting his zipper caught in the curtains and frantically attempting to cover his crotch, then extricate himself. There’s more silliness involving a pet snake, Elisabeth’s jealous ex-fiancee, a kindly maid and her nubile sisters, and two female gendarmes.
Mouret tries to affect a Woody Allen-ish, self-deprecating innocence and clumsiness but simply comes as a bumbling oaf. Even worse, his comic repertoire seems confined to shrugs and double takes.
