Une famille à louer

This is a hit. Benoit Poelvoorde in perhaps the best comedy role after Nothing to Declare. He plays a lonely millionaire who has everything but a family and decides to buy just that. He picks a beautiful mother of two who's kind of bonkers, but needs the money, so she takes the offer. Benoit makes his way from luxury into a weaker social class and it's fun almost from start to finish. Benoit was born for roles like this and here he has a lot of space and the humour is used to the maximum. I had a great time and want to see it again right away. Story****, Action>No, Humor*****, Violence>No, Entertainment*****, Music***, Visuals****, Atmosphere*** Suspense**. 8/10. (18.09.2020)

It has style, an idea and it is fun. But this applies only to the first half hour. Then the theme is runs out, it becomes static and boring and it unnecessarily soon turns (not) in favor of the romantic line in a thousand times seen adaptation of "how a disparate duo finds their way to each other despite circumstances and prejudices"", that is packed with countless clichés. Which wouldn't necessarily have to be bad if there had been least a small spark between them and if it hadn't been the same as the director's Romantics Anonymous. Just this time it is much, much, worse. (20.11.2015)

Oh, and here I naively thought that when a film is presented as a comedy, it would actually be funny. And it is funny... for maybe five minutes in total. That seems pretty low for a comedy, though admittedly I know more American films that are longer and even less funny, and they're also comedies. But it's a pity that the romance became more important here. (09.11.2016)