Original title: | God Save the Tuche |
Director: | Jean-Paul Rouve |
Release: | Cinema |
Running time: | 95 minutes |
Release date: | Not communicated |
Rating: |
The predicted wreck of French popular cinema has a new name: God Save the Tuche. After four installments in the saga, whose humor oscillated between the burlesque and the nonsense, this fifth opus takes a new step: that of the total exhaustion of a concept that was already no longer amusing many people. A film where laughter is as rare as mild weather in London, where the plot fits on a crumpled post-it note, and where it's easy to understand why some of the press, particularly online, has been kept at a distance. Preserving the dignity of film critics? Or limit the damage by avoiding too much negative feedback before release? The question remains open, but after seeing this disaster, we understand the strategy.
The basic concept of Les Tuches is simple and (at first) effective: a handsome but endearing family thrown into a world that is not their own. After Monaco, the United States and the Élysée Palace, this time the playground is London and the British monarchy. The idea could have been amusing, especially at a time when the British royal family is already fueling unintentional comedy with its own scandals. But alas, the film does absolutely nothing with this potential. The narrative pretext - a soccer clinic in London for Jeff and Cathy's grandson - is distressingly poor, serving only to take the family to England without any real stakes.
From then on, everything follows on mechanically, without the slightest inventiveness. Jeff Tuche (Jean-Paul Rouve) and his tribe are confronted with British customs, but the comic situations are predictable, heavy-handed and recycled from other films of the same genre. Between worn-out misunderstandings, hackneyed gags about cultural differences and jokes repeated to the point of exhaustion (yes, we get it, they eat French fries...), the film piles on the scenes without ever really surprising or triggering anything other than a polite smile.
The film's biggest problem is its humor. Where previous installments sometimes managed to elicit a few heartfelt laughs with their assumed absurdity, here everything falls flat. The situational comedy is overdone, the dialogue is cartoonish, and the rare attempts at modernity sound terribly forced. Jean-Paul Rouve, who takes over from Olivier Baroux as director, wanted to inject a more absurd tone, influenced by his love of Monty Python and Les Nuls. The result? A gloubiboulga of indigestible humor, where every joke seems to have been hastily written on a corner of a fast-food paper tablecloth.
The Tuches have always been colorful characters, but their touching naiveté has been transformed here into simple, crass stupidity. Jeff, once endearing despite his clumsiness, becomes a grotesque puppet, while Mamie Suze (Claire Nadeau) rambles incomprehensible phrases that sound like a looped audio bug. Isabelle Nanty, though an excellent actress, struggles to give substance to Cathy Tuche, who here limits herself to playing a wife tired of her husband's nonsense. And what about the supporting cast? The new English characters are caricatures worthy of a bad parody, between a pinched butler, an insipid king (Bernard Menez, who we've known to be more inspired) and ridiculous aristocrats straight out of a bad sitcom.
Visually, the film makes no effort. Jean-Paul Rouve shoots every scene with the nonchalance of a film student in a hurry to hand in a late paper. The shots are flat and unimaginative, and the mise-en-scène is content to string sequences together without ever seeking to energize the narrative. There's a cruel lack of ideas in the framing and art direction, and the London settings, which are supposed to add a touch of the exotic, are merely a soulless façade. Worse still, much of the film was shot in Belgium for budgetary reasons, giving a cheap result in which “London” often feels like a reconstructed street or a poorly integrated green background.
Even Martin Rappeneau's music, usually effective in this kind of production, seems drowned in a generic sound soup. As for Delphine Rondeau's editing, it gives the impression of having been done in a hurry to fill the gaps in a non-existent script. The result is a 95-minute running time that seems like an eternity.
God Save the Tuche has nothing in common with the saga's early days. Where the first installment retained a certain tenderness and a satirical view of working-class France, this episode is content to line up clichés without the slightest finesse. By trying to force the issue, Jean-Paul Rouve transforms his film into a ponderous comedy that, above all, makes you want to run out of the cinema.
This fifth episode could have been an amusing swan song, but instead it's a pathetic death rattle. At this point, even the Tuche family's most fervent supporters are likely to throw in the towel. England didn't deserve this. Neither did the public. If you have a modicum of love for cinema and your own sanity, run away. God Save you. We can't thank the Déjà agency enough for saving us two precious hours of travel to see this cinematic disaster in a press screening.
God Save the Tuche
Directed by Jean-Paul Rouve
Produced by Ardavan Safaee
Written by Jean-Paul Rouve, Philippe Mechelen, Julien Hervé, Nessim Chikhaoui
Starring Jean-Paul Rouve, Isabelle Nanty, Claire Nadeau, Sarah Stern, Pierre Lottin, Théo Fernandez, Philippe Dusseau, Bernard Ménez, Elise Larnicol, Aristote Laios, Peter Hudson, Blaise Pettebone, Scarlett Bernard, Céline Menville, Jacky Nercessian, Nicolas de Broglie, Rufo Quintavalle, Blaise Pettebone, Aurore Broutin, Dominique Frot, Vadim Chasques, Ray Johnson, Anita Fridrihsons, Charles Turley, Daniel Horn, Guy Chaffraix, Pierre Tard, Valentin Dumerchez, Tristan Balu, Nicole Aragona, Dominique Farrugia, Alain Chabat
Music by Martin Rappeneau
Cinematography : Christophe Graillot
Edited by Delphine Rondeau
Production companies : Pathé Films, TF1 Films Production, Nolita Cinema, Logical Content Ventures, Les Films du Monsieur , Beside Productions
Distributed by Pathé Films (France)
Release date : February 5, 2025 (France)
Running time : 95 minutes
Seen on February 3, 2025 at UGC Le Majestic Meaux , salle 4 seat F10
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