Mon père, ce héros

This film is a corker! It is one of depardieu's finest, and is well worth watching! I saw this film and was instantly put off by the fact it was subtitled (I only speak french adequately, not well enough to get by with a whole film!) but after 2 minutes I was engrossed! This film is a MUST!!!!

"Mon père ce héros" is a quote of Victor Hugo, the most famous French poet of all time. And although the movie is very realistic, kind of true-to-life situation, it is full of poetry. It shows one more time that Love is a big awkward thing for everyone. It is a very nice comedy, rather funny and moving. The movie helps to realize the gap existing between a father and a 14-year-old teenager. All the actors (not only Depardieu And Marie Gillain) are sincere while the main subject is "lies" !! I deeply recommend you to see this film and not its remake - a bit too tasteless (actually the dialogs are exactly the same). However, if you want to spend a good time in front of your telly, I believe Mon père ce Héros to be the perfect choice.

After brushing up on my French for a few weeks, I decided to brave this movie without English subtitles. I own a copy of the 1994 remake and know it like the back of my hand, but just to make sure I'd have the dialog practically memorized, I watched it the night before. Luckily, for the first half of the movie, the French and English version of My Father the Hero are nearly identical! The mother-daughter squabble in the apartment, the voicemails on a faceless girlfriend's machine, driving up to the hotel in a jeep and complaining that the guests are all old people, the moon going behind a cloud after he yells at her to come outside and look, forbidding her from dating musicians, the thong bathing suit, the older man at the bar offering to photograph her-as you can see, the list is extensive. I was able to understand everything they said until the last twenty minutes, and even then, I was able to piece together words, phrases, and context.

Gérard Depardieu stars in both, as the father of a fourteen-year-old girl making the transition from girl to woman via the discovery of her hormones. While on a tropical vacation, Marie Gillain develops a crush on a local boy, and thinks pretending she's with her boyfriend instead of her dad will impress the older kid. I know, the premise is a little sick, but if you can take it for what it is-a comedy-you'll be fine.

Except... the 1991 original isn't a comedy. Yes, the water-skiing scene is still in there, and the "You have a daughter?" sequence is the same, but this version is a drama. Because of the very slight, but very crucial change, I didn't end up liking the movie, while the remake remains one of my favorites. The story is about a young girl first discovering romance who makes a gigantic mistake by lying and pretending she has experience when she hasn't. Once she confesses what she's done to her father, he's livid, but he agrees to go along with her lie-hence the title. The movie is called My Father, the Hero, not My Father, the Bad Parent. At the end of the movie, you're supposed to think he did the right thing, bonded with his daughter, and helped her transition out of adolescence with grace and courage. At the end of this movie, I thought the exact opposite. One small example of the difference: the closing lines of both films are exactly the same, but in 1994, Gérard laughed, and in 1991 he cried.

I'd recommend sticking with the Disney version. It's far more uplifting, and it greatly improved the story. With such an odd premise-pretending her dad is her boyfriend-you're going to need a total laugh-fest to get through it, and the original just makes you depressed.

We love the movie and so do Australian high school students of French! Could you please let us know how to purchase the original DVD version (in French), preferably Region 4 so that we can watch it here? I am a French teacher and the old video copy that I have of this wonderful, fun and, as the students say, "cool" film is getting more than a little worn out. It is wonderful to see Mauritius which appears to be really beautiful in the film. I could easily enough purchase the American version but no thank you....the French one is so unreal. We love the story of the teenage girl coming to terms with the situation her parents are in as well as her first fling with a boyfriend. We're desperate to purchase this film on DVD!

Please do not pass this film by, it is worth all the effort to find it (I found mine on Amazon co.u.k), and similar to other forum users I watched the USA version first.

Without going over the film details all of which have been written in this forum and in much better detail than I can muster, all I can say that this should not be compared to the USA version as the French version is far superior in every way.

I gave this a 7.5 out of 10, one point missing as the transfer from a VHS take can only be considered very poor, but having said that I would not part with my DVD copy for ten times what I paid for it. Enough said, this is a top French comedy, and Gerard Depardieu out acts everyone again, this is a forgotten French gem :)