TheRetroCritic

Shortly before Gene Wilder turned a French film into The Woman In Red , we got The Toy , a remake of Francis Veber's Le Jouet starring Richard Pryor in the role originally played by Pierre Richard. It did well at the box-office despite critics not exactly praising it. One of the many Francis Veber comedies to be adapted into Hollywood films, The Toy should have been a breeze with its simple concept leaving little room for messing up and the reliable Pryor doing his thing. For the most part, this remake is pretty faithful to the original film as a rich, spoiled kid (played by Scott Schwartz) basically buys a grown man as a toy just to annoy his distant father only to find that a friendship develops between he and his purchase. The key scenes from the French film are recreated here from Pierre Richard's slapstick shenanigans to the kid's creation of a newspaper exposing his father's cold approach to everyone. As hard as he tries to make the film fun, Richard Pryor f

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 remad

French comedy maestro Francis Veber directs this Hollywood remake of his own film The Fugitives (Les Fugitifs) casting Martin Short and Nick Nolte in the roles formerly played by Pierre Richard and Gerard Depardieu. The film sees Lucas (Nolte), an ex-bank robber, finally come out of prison after five years only to find himself being taken hostage by a bumbling thief who happened to be robbing the bank he was depositing money in minutes after his release. Ned (Short),  the thief in question, was attempting to steal enough money to pay for a special school his daughter, who was left mute after the death of her mother, was attending. Unfortunately, the robbery goes awry as he shoots Lucas in the leg accidentally, crashes the getaway car and gets kidnapped by some crooks. Lucas finds himself in the awkward position of having to prove his own innocence while helping Ned and his daughter escape from both criminals and the law. Casting Nick Nolte and Martin Short in those roles was in