Éric Judor

  • Les nouvelles aventures d’Aladin (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, February 2022) The Arabian myth of Aladdin (filtered through many pop-culture sources) goes for wild parody in silly French comedy Les nouvelles aventures d’Aladin. Placing its bets on all-out comic devices, the story has a framing device (with a ne’er-do-well trying to distract kids from an upcoming robbery by narrating a version of Aladdin’s story) that presumably explains the pop-culture references, multiple anachronisms and tone shifts in the genie’s tale. You probably know the basics: a likable thief, a beautiful princess, a marriage-hungry king and a mischievous genie. The production values are not bad—there are plenty of rough special effects to get the point across, some rather good set design, and one expansive musical number executed as a rap music video. Kev Adams plays Aladdin with some panache, Vanessa Gudie is cute as the princess and Eric Judor turns in a nicely charismatic performance as the genie. I strongly suspect that much of the film’s comedy relies on a thorough knowledge of French pop-culture circa 2015, as some of the jokes land weirdly from a French-Canadian perspective, and the film occasionally gesticulates wildly toward walk-on characters. (Sequel Alad’2 is much worse in this regard.)  There isn’t much here in terms of plotting, which is perhaps just as well considering how the film can rely on audience familiarity with the plot to tweak it humorously. (The sequence in which the traditional three wishes are extended to more of them is expected, but amusing.)  I smiled throughout much of the film and even chuckled a few times, which already makes this much funnier than several so-called “comedies” I’ve watched recently. Les nouvelles aventures d’Aladin is not meant to be particularly witty, but it does score a joke every few minutes. Not bad—although I seriously wonder how the film would fare in translation.

  • La tour Montparnasse infernale [Don’t Die Too Hard!] (2001)

    La tour Montparnasse infernale [Don’t Die Too Hard!] (2001)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) My expectations for La tour Montparnasse infernale were correct but still underwhelmed: I was expecting a French comic take on The Towering Inferno and that’s more or less what I got… except that the laughs weren’t as plentiful as I hoped for. I suppose that much of the disconnect comes from the very specific type of comedy from lead duo Éric Judor and Ramzy Bedia, a well-oiled team that clearly plays to their strengths here, even though the result may prove to be too dumb for some and alien for others. Familiarity with French culture is a must—in my case, I knew just enough to realize how much I missed in order to make sense of the result. It’s an aggressively, proudly dumb kind of comedy that takes from its betters (especially Die Hard, which remains funnier than this parody) but doesn’t manage to improve on it: The plot has stupid window washers foiling a high-rise hostage situation/robbery, but the script never flies too high. The reliance on French pop-culture references makes the result incomprehensible at times (a Wikipedia trawl clarifies some of them, but too late for most viewers), while the slapdash production values don’t really make the film pop in its limp action sequences. La tour Montparnasse infernale was a box-office success back in 2001, but it’s hard for contemporary non-French audiences to properly appreciate what the fuss was about: we simply lack most of the cultural references to even make sense of it and the film doesn’t have many additional cinematic qualities to make it worth anything on its own absent the prior knowledge required to enjoy what’s on the screen.