Gérard Jugnot

(On Cable TV, August 2022) If you’re looking for old-school physical gag comedy, you could do much, much worse than to go back and have a look at Les rois du gag. Co-written and directed by Claude Zidi, le film features Gérard Jugnot and an adorably young Thierry Lhermitte as two men who keep coming up with contraptions for comedy gags in obscure venues. Things look up when an established comic with problems reaching out to younger generations hires then as gagmen, and when (later) they get embroiled in the shooting of a serious American film in Paris. Quite a bit of Les rois du gag is dedicated to the minutiae of gag-making and the making of a sketch comedy show—we get to see the ideas (rejected or modified) that get refined into an audience-ready product, and the bickering between different comic visions when it’s time to renew a show. The satirical look at “a great American director” late in the film also brings its share of jokes while bringing to mind many possible inspirations. There are more than a few chuckles here and there, even if the last act of the film struggles to deliver a satisfying conclusion to the film’s themes. Still, compared to a lot of other French comedies of the same era, Les rois du gags is better than most, and still worth a look today.