LA CHEVRE - REVIEW

Slapstick maestro Pierre Richard teams up with Gerard Depardieu in La Chevre (aka The Goat), a French comedy about a man plagued by relentless bad luck who is hired to find a missing person who is just as unlucky as he is.

Campana (Depardieu) is the professional detective who is unfortunate enough to be tasked with assisting Francois Perrin (Richard) with his mission, the latter not realising that the only reason he's leading the investigation is because the father of the lost young woman is hoping his inherent bad luck will lead him to his daughter somehow. The adventure takes the unlikely duo to Mexico and, along the way, they encounter gangsters, prostitutes, dirty cops, gorillas, bees and countless other problems. Eventually, the initially sceptical Campana starts to realise that Perrin might just be as jinxed as his boss claimed he was.

Pierre Richard and Gerard Depardieu teamed up in two other Francis Veber films, Les Comperes and Les Fugitifs, which were both remade in Hollywood as Father's Day and Three Fugitives respectively. Depardieu's macho, serious demeanour contrasts really well with Richard's clueless, clumsy fool and the result is an always entertaining dynamic. La Chevre is probably the funniest of those three movies mostly because it doesn't have a corny subplot, instead focusing on the simple yet effective story and the two leads. There are great visual gags throughout, some terrific slapstick moments, very funny dialogs and the score is another upbeat gem by composer Vladimir Cosma.

If you've never heard of La Chevre and you're not too familiar with French comedies then I definitely recommend you seek this one out as it's something of cult classic. The film was remade by Hollywood 10 years later into Pure Luck starring Martin Short and Danny Glover.

Funny stuff.