The Car Keys Movie Review:


They should have just titled this French comedy Dude, Where's My Car Keys? It's merely a series of painfully obvious inside jokes, few which are even remotely clever.

It opens with Baffie flogging his script for a low-concept film: the average person spends 23 days of his life looking for his car keys, so surely that's basis enough for a movie. But the top film producers and actors turn him down, so he gets his pal Russo to accompany him on a knowingly absurd romp, talking continually about the script and filming process and rampaging through the entire French filmmaking community along the way.

When he's poking fun at French cinema's pomposity and arrogance, this is actually hysterically funny. But when he's being even more self-absorbed and indulgent than the worst French filmmaker this is as annoying as a pesky little brother. And then some lines ('The keys don't matter, it's an inner journey') have it both ways. The result is an extremely silly slacker buddy comedy that just gets more ridiculous and less sophisticated as it progresses. Most gags are so badly overstated that they're just not funny (the worst is the spot-the-extra running joke).

Of course, some of this hits the target with deadly accuracy. The pub session brainstorming over essential ingredients needed for a hit movie is goofy and astute, until they start parodying those ingredients even before they're stated. Constant references to the 'pathetic' script acknowledge the inanity of the entire project. And Russo's whinging about the plot (and his promised romance/sex scene) are at least endearing.

But it's just a relentless onslaught of random, broad wackiness. When they're trapped in a vineyard, Baffie notes, 'If a helicopter swoops down we'll grab it and escape.' To which Russo replies, 'Are you stoned?' But we know exactly what will happen next. And even the sequences shot in black and white and various forms of animation aren't particularly inspired. It's just too smug for words. They were clearly extremely pleased by their wittiness (Depardieu as a cheese salesman!), but it simply doesn't translate to the audience.



Rich Cline

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