The Troubleshooter

A film which begins as a comedy and ends up as a drama ;it's not derivative on the French scene dominated by the "feel good" genre.Behind the misadventures of a young mechanic ,a really good Samaritan ,you must pay attention to see what serious things the movie is saying :nowadays some unfortunate children are left to their own advices ,parents are irresponsible , the equal opportunities are a myth ; it happens every day and the society has to be blamed : one does not know who the children's mom was -she does not appear in the movie,and for a good reason- , perhaps was she herself a child whose parents did not care for her.

Eric Judor shines in this offbeat movie : a forty-something mechanic ,still leaving in his mother's house ( not exactly to be precise) , a mother who always puts him down -she's at once his mom and the owner of the little tow-truck business where he 's working-

The day he has to take care of children whose mom has vanished into thin air , he will go out of his way for them in a rather selfish background , people turning their back on him ;all he does backfires on him.When the social worker lends a helping hand,she's simply doing her job ,her commitment to the children's fate is purely professional . But the hung up mechanic ,for the first time in his life,has understood that ,by becoming a "surrogate "dad for these abandoned kids, he has found a way to stop being a grown-up kid himself .

The most tragic (and I mean tragic) scene of the film is filmed with a stunning economy of means, a keen sense of decency : as Richard -1787 wrote in his insightful review , one didn't expect much from this movie, and absolutely not such a sequence :even the dog called Elvis plays an important part in the drama.

One can regret that one more time English songs (the Moody blues' "nights in white satin " is irrelevant in that context) are used in the movie :it's all the more irritating since the score is nice,particularly the instrumental on the final cast and credits .

On the other hand ,the final sequence is heart-warming ; after a tragedy ,life must go on: now the hero is a man and as such he acts even though his attitude may seem reckless.

I entirely second the first review.