Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

L'Emmerdeur (1973)

Director: Edouard Molinaro

Average user rating
1 review

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Good crazy comedies are few and far between these days. This one (disappointingly remade by Billy Wilder as Buddy Buddy in 1981) takes off nicely after about twenty minutes thanks to the solid presence of Ventura, an unwordy script, and a deceptively deadpan beginning. Ventura, a hired killer with one shooting already under his belt, takes a hotel room from which he plans a political assassination. Meanwhile, in the next room, the pain in the arse of the title attempts to hang himself. Ventura's calm exterior slowly shatters as the incompetent idiot slowly latches onto him; he ends up driving pregnant women to hospital, falling off ledges, getting drugged in a case of mistaken identity, looking for a garage distributing free plastic saints, and finally sharing a cell with the amiable idiot, the possessor of a mammoth persecution complex. Ventura's slow disintegration is a delight to watch, and Brel manages well at being extremely irritating.

Author: CPe 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

User reviews of this film

  • Lorelei said...
    Posted on Mar 11 2008 14:25 Who would believe the French were this funny? I didn't, prior to seeing this film. You must watch it and watch it dubbed, as it's so fast you could never keep up with the subtitles. This film was a revelation to me and my friends watching it just for the sake of staying up late, as we all ended up screaming with laughter and falling off chairs onto the floor. It's a great shame that the ghastly American bastardisation is shown frequently on TV and the original hilarious one has not been shown since before I got a video.
    Report as inappropriate

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Edouard Molinaro

Producer: Georges Dancigers

Cast: Lino Ventura, Jacques Brel, Caroline Cellier, Nino Castelnuovo, Jean-Pierre Darras full cast

Genre(s): Comedy

Duration: 84 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.