5 days off with nothing to do seems like a good time to provide public service by watching some movies you will never see so you can spend your time on something more worthwhile like buying, cooking and eating a turkey and pretending to like it, surrounded by your relatives who you are pretending to tolerate.
Two French comedies I recently watched are not your ROFL, ROFLMAO or any other combination of “R” and “F” but nevertheless they were both fun to watch, clever, with the sense of humor and easy on the eye. French comedies were always popular in my childhood, maybe because the Soviet Government decided they were innocent enough for the people to watch without generating bad ideas and unworthy thoughts. All references to sex and nudity were expunged, movies were dubbed and soviet public was free to ROFL. Such comedy stars as Louis De Funes, Pierre Richard, Fernandel and Gerard Depardieu became household names. When I was 10 years old these comedies seemed very funny, many years later not so much. However, I think that many people who grew up and lived there have a soft spot for French comedy and French movies in general.
The Valet (La Doublure) is a comedy about a poor schmuck who due to a weird set of circumstances has to pretend that he is dating French top model. Comedic situations abound and there is, of course, some romantic plot twists. Nothing new, groundbreaking or critically acclaimed, but still funny and light-hearted. While watching this movie I recognized one of the actors from another French comedy I rented recently The Closet (Le Placard). In this movie a worthless employee about to be fired comes up with a scheme to save his job by pretending to be gay and coming out of the closet. The comedy makes fun of the climate of political correctness and exposes how presence of a gay co-worker makes other people uncomfortable and causes other people to re-asses their values. The surprising part for me was how workplace atmosphere in France is similar to (for example) the place where I work, guided by the wisdom of the “code of business conduct”. I thought Europe was supposed to be more welcoming to sexual minorities, although the movie is 6 years old, so they may have moved on. Another curious item is that apparently the name Francois Pignon must be funny for the French because it shows up in 6 different movies.
While watching movies with subtitles I always assume that some funny tongue-in-cheek moments are lost in translation. However, only a small percentage of foreign movies is dubbed so this the the best I can do, short of learning French or marrying a French woman. Although in this case I probably will be too busy to watch obscure French comedies and write about it here.