Les Compères

If the ability to take the mundane and put topspin on it is not one of the criteria for genius perhaps it should be. Frank Loesser for example could and did write love songs about 1) a dripping tap and 2)a term used by professional gamblers to describe an easy mark and ANOTHER Frank, Francis Veber can take the most hackneyed plot and spin a glorious web out of it. One tends to lose count of the times a woman has told several men that they fathered her child - Buona Sera, Mrs Campbell, for one. Patrice Leconte put spin on Veber with his 50 - 50 Chance in which the child (Vanessa Paradis) seeks out her two possible fathers (Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo) only to involve them all in gang-wars. Here Veber brings together a pragmatic journalist and a milquetoast teacher and throws in everything except the kitchen sink. It never lets up on the thrills or the laffs and the playing is excellent. 9/10