443 Best Movies to Watch From France (Page 30)

A screwball comedy following two crass female cops sounds, well, nice. But without a compelling mystery, believable chemistry, and funny jokes, Nice Girls fails to live up to its name. The crime that drives the movie’s plot feels flimsy and Disney-esque, a formula of a mystery you’ve seen a hundred times before. The chemistry between Leo and Melanie seems nonexistent. Yes, they’re capable actors who do especially well in their action scenes, but together, they fail to create a memorable spark. And then there are the jokes, which I want to believe are lost in translation instead of just plain unfunny. They feel dated in their observations but current because of the context (they’re often racial or political), but they never seem to land. None of the other parts of the film seem to. It’s a great idea—not since Spy have I seen such a valiant attempt at a female crime-busting duo—but it ultimately fails to deliver.

Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime

Actor: Alice Taglioni, Antoine Duléry, Baptiste Lecaplain, Benjamin Baroche, Franz Lang, Jess Liaudin, Katrina Durden, Lucien Jean-Baptiste, Noémie Lvovsky, Stefi Celma

Director: Noémie Saglio

After a strong first act that has lots of fun playing with fake identities donned by its characters (and with a particularly entertaining supporting turn from Bill Nighy), Role Play slows down significantly and only ends up spinning its wheels. In its attempt to inject some more drama into the central relationship between Anna (who goes by Emma with her family) and Dave, the film articulates itself awkwardly, overemphasizes the obvious, and loses precious time for the plot develop in interesting ways. By the third act, Role Play practically teleports itself into entirely new circumstances, where the emotional stakes are neither high enough or clear enough to begin with.

Genre: Action, Comedy, Romance

Actor: Angus McGruther, Bill Nighy, Connie Nielsen, Cornell Adams, David Oyelowo, Dominic Holmes, Erkan Sulcani, Jade-Eleena Dregorius, Jonathan Failla, Julia Schunevitsch, Kaley Cuoco, Lucia Aliu, Moritz Berg, Reagan Bryan-Gudgeon, Rudi Dharmalingam, Simon Delaney, Sonita Henry, Stacy Thunes, Steffen Jung, Stephanie Levi-John

Director: Thomas Vincent

Rating: R

Making a heist so unoriginal and uneventful is a feat, and Gold Brick manages to do both without missing a beat. None of the characters are particularly interesting or distinct enough to remember their names. The idea of stealing from a big corporation (usually a solid setup) has no bite because the motivations feel hollow and unrealized. Most of the "ingenious" slight of hands and master plans don't impress or stick, and later plot points' payoffs stay as lackluster as their setups. Crisp, saturated cinematography is pleasant on the eyes but not enough to stop them from glazing over.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Agathe Rousselle, Antoine Gouy, Bruno Lochet, Grégoire Colin, Igor Gotesman, Irina Muluile, Ludovik, Nicolas de Lavergne, Nina Meurisse, Raphaël Quenard, Slimane Dazi, Stéphan Wojtowicz, Youssef Hajdi

Director: Jérémie Rozan

Even before its characters get to Europe, Bawaal sets itself up as a truly ludicrous romantic comedy, completely unmoored from any common sense or internal logic, and with the most cartoonishly awful protagonist at its center. There isn't a single convincing story idea here, from the way Ajay's students learn from and idolize him despite his complete lack of teaching ability, to the way he treats his wife Nisha like dirt after learning she has epilepsy. Movies about scoundrels aren't unwelcome, but it feels as if there hasn't been any thought put into how Ajay views other people and the self-image he so desperately wants to protect—and even less thought seems to have been put into the hilariously shallow ways Ajay "earns" redemption by the end.

But then the characters get to Europe, and Bawaal inexplicably becomes a history lesson about the atrocities of World War II, which are briefly recreated in corny and at times tastelessly done fantasy sequences. The idea that these grown adults who have access to knowledge and pop culture are only now finding out that genocide is bad is nothing short of mind-numbing. Even worse is how Bawaal ignores every difficult and painful truth we've learned and continue to learn from World War II, and reduces so much suffering into a contrived moral lesson about how we should accept each other's flaws and learn to forgive. No matter the efforts of its lead actors or the quality of the production values on display, the film just can't overcome the bad taste it leaves in the mouth.

Genre: Comedy, Drama, History, Romance

Actor: Anjuman Saxena, Janhvi Kapoor, Manoj Pahwa, Mukesh Tiwari, Prateek Pachori, Varun Dhawan

Director: Nitesh Tiwari