Haters

We can easily understand that for quota reasons, Amazon Prime video has to offer original French creations, but it would perhaps be good if the quality of the films offered was really up to the objective. As much as Le bal des folles (2021) and Flashbkack (2021) had been nice surprises, Brutus VS Cesar (2020) and Connecté (2020) had been very disappointing comedies whose quality was closer to a M6 TV movie than to a real movie that we discover on the big screen. Unfortunately, Haters soon turns out to be a comedy without any real scenario and made up of one scene after another, most of which lack real bite and strength.

In the same way, while the subculture of youtubers seems to continue to spread to our great disappointment, making a movie with one of them as the main character of the film really leaves one wondering. By wanting to make a comedy in the era of time on a social phenomenon, Haters quickly becomes the typical example of the easy comedy bringing nothing to the genre and only proposing implausible scenes that see irritating in its way to put in the foreground original characters that it is a dysfunctional family, neighbors with reprehensible morals. We discover the youtubers Tom the llama (Kev Adam) and his faithful assistant. While this youtuber knows a tremendous success and soon reaches his millionth subscriber, he decides to mark the occasion and propose to his girlfriend live on his channel but things will not go as planned. Receiving many bad comments after the publication of his video, Tom and his assistant decide to go and meet the most important detractors and thus to travel by train through France for meetings that will be surprising.

Haters could have been a hilarious comedy if screenwriter Romuald Boulanger had really taken the time to propose something other than a script tailored to Kev Adams and to the glory of his quest for ratings at all costs. The result is a film with repetitive mechanics that puts Tom face to face with his detractors one after the other. What could have been an effective short film seems here to be stretched to the limit to make it a feature film. Yet, some scenes show that Haters could have been a success with a director used to shooting comedies and an even more ferocious approach to the debilitating sphere of youtubers in France.  Accustomed to parading around at respectable film premieres and having virtually no film culture, youtubers like Tom reveal the ugly sides of a ratings-based system. It would have been interesting to show in this film the public side of the youtubers who seem to live in their own world and are followed by a young public in loss of references. 

Only the casting of this film really deserves our attention and we find around Kev Adams, Clara Joly, Elie Semoun, Sara Forestier, Rayane Bensetti, Seth Gueko, Fred Testot, Audrey Fleurot, Philippe Lacheau, Lucien Jean Baptiste, Vincent Desagnat, Nadia Farès, Ludovik, Pascal Demolon, Franck Dubosc, Olivier Giroud, William Baldwin and Jean Claude Van Damme. During a scene, these numerous actors make a more or less long appearance (even several for Elie Semoun). This sumptuous gathering of personalities shows that Haters benefits from an important budget, but we would have preferred to have a better script and fewer known supporting actors. 

Haters
Directed by Stéphane Marelli
Produced by Romuald Boulanger
Written by Romuald Boulanger 
With Kev Adams, Esteban, Clara Joly, Elie Semoun, Sara Forestier, Rayane Bensetti, rapper Seth Gueko, Fred Testot, Audrey Fleurot, Philippe Lacheau, Lucien Jean Baptiste, Vincent Desagnat, Nadia Farès, Ludovik, Pascal Demolon, Franck Dubosc, Olivier Giroud, Jean-Claude Van Damme, William Baldwin
Director of photography: Xavier Castro 
Production companies: Amazon Prime Video
Distributed by Amazon Prime Video
Release date: December 3, 2021 (World)
Running time: 90 minutes

Seen on December 03, 2021 (on Prime video)

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