La maison du bonheur (2006)

(On TV, August 2022) Some movie premises transcend time and space, so if you’re a fan of Mr. Blandings Builds a House or The Money Pit, then there’s a good chance you’re primed for the French Dany Boon comedy La maison du bonheur. At its core, the plot is simple: a man buys a fixer-upper house and soon finds himself submerged by the mounting expenses of fixing it. The complications to the plot, on the other hand, get increasingly contrived as he is betrayed by a colleague, loses his job, sells his family’s current apartment, gets embroiled in legal troubles, is misled by his realtor and deals with incompetent handymen. The film is amusing enough but scattered when it comes to its comic tone: too often mean-spirited, it relishes the humiliations it hands over to its protagonist, and ends on nothing more than a huge plot cheat. Writer-director-star Boon (in the first of many hyphenate jobs) knows how to get a laugh, but there’s a limit to the sympathy the unpleasant protagonist can earn from the audience: he’s not an everyday man stuck in circumstances beyond his control, but actively courts the consequences of his actions. La maison du bonheur gets a few laughs, but no more : Too often, it feels like a prototype for the better Boon comedies that would follow.