IMDb reviews From IMDb
★ 8 / 10
"Valjean!" "The Unknown Soldier!"
Stark-MySideYourSide
A tremendously amusing film, where listing Gerard Depardieu as a star, knowingly a deterrent for some, is a misnomer. Possessing a small part in the film…
A tremendously amusing film, where listing Gerard Depardieu as a star, knowingly a deterrent for some, is a misnomer. Possessing a small part in the film, Depardieu is almost unnoticeable as the story continues.
The film focuses on construction processes to "update" the city of Paris for a new industrial renaissance. The "villain", as it were, is the minister of public works, who "closes the Champs D'Elysee for blasting today", and proposed to build two skyscrapers on either side of Notre Dame. Played with a zeal for comedy is Charles Denner, and the hapless inspector Lalatte, trying so desperately to go on vacation, listing a series of disappearances (including 20 foreign tourists) as "escapades"-being young and in the city of Paris, an easy dismissal with an overbearing wife honking a car horn outside.The symbolism in the film is tremendous-and by the end, you certainly wish for one or two things to have improved, but overall Rondin and Gaspard (the two lead roles) are played as dreamers, idealists in an era where such things are overlooked.This film comes highly recommended.
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★ 10 / 10
fun and essential
happytrigger-64-390517
Pierre "magic" Tchernia was a kind director who shot light and fun movies, "la Belle Américaine", "le Viager", "la Gueule de l'Autre", "Bonjour l'Angoisse". He…
Pierre "magic" Tchernia was a kind director who shot light and fun movies, "la Belle Américaine", "le Viager", "la Gueule de l'Autre", "Bonjour l'Angoisse". He also did so much entertaining works for television, like "Monsieur Cinema", a must helping people to love cinema. He was a nice entertainer.
"les Gaspards" is one of my favorite french movies, with a theme that is still current : the destruction of old picturesque districts (castles, mansions) to build awful towers or buildings. I just love Michel Serrault and Philippe Noiret characters living in the past, fighting against the destruction of french patrimoine which is more current nowadays than ever. At the time of "les Gaspards", the wheelers-dealers destructed old stations from XIXth century, castles, mansions to build a concrete jungle. Philippe Noiret's Gaspard lives in an incredible underworld and anarchic city struggling against nasty urban delopment, and it is a constant visual pleasure all through the movie. And what a casting, from Charles Denner (terrific as the nasty Minister of Public Works) to Jean Carmet and Gérard Depardieu (yet drinking red wine together).
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★ 7 / 10
Subterraneen homesick blues.
ulicknormanowen
The novel by Gaston Leroux depicted a mysterious secret society living in the catacombs of Paris ,the Talpa , speaking old French ;accustomed to living in the…
The novel by Gaston Leroux depicted a mysterious secret society living in the catacombs of Paris ,the Talpa , speaking old French ;accustomed to living in the dark ,they became mutants:blind, a nose which has turned into a snout, twenty fingers ; their food is rats ;why "la double vie de Theophraste Longuet "? Because the famous brigand Cartouche has taken half of the hero's persona.The film drastically wanders from the initial novel ; Tchernia and Asterix 's father Goscinny transferred the action to the seventies and opted for a comedy .Compared to their first effort ,"le viager" , it's perhaps less funny , more repetitive but not derivative in the contemporary cinema :using the same actors ( Serrault , Galabru,Carmet ) and adding colorful Noiret , this is definitely off the beaten track : in the seventies ,many mayors wanted their town modern ,not only in Paris. The civil engineering secretary (Charles Denner) has ambitious but questionable plans: to drain the river Seine to build a super highway which will cross Paris ;two buildings will surround Notre Dame De Paris! (the Middle Ages meet the twentieth century!)The society who lives underground in Leroux 's novel will turn into champions of the old gai Paris ; hostage-taking (the bookseller's daughter, twenty tourists they use to produce electricity by riding bikes ) and blackmail :they will free them only if the politician give up their works which spoil the Parisian landscape ; gaspard is another word (invented in the film) for "rat ";but ,unlike in the novel,they do not eat rats ,but epicurean Noiret has good meals with his guests and he's a wine connoisseur.The national heritage preservation is still relevant today ,that's why Tchernia's movie has worn well.Leroux's novel was adapted as a more faithful miniseries by Yannick Andréi with Jean Carmet as the lead this time in the late seventies .
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6.2/10
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