One rule for watching movies: don’t judge a movie by its title, at least until you’ve seen it. And there’s nothing more generic than French girlwhich is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, despite having a really hot and frothy direct-to-streaming title. It stars Zach Braff, who plays a rather likable goofball (just as spelled, no doubt!) caught in a sort of love triangle with Evelyne Brochu (as the French girl!) and Vanessa Hudgens (as the non-French girl!). That premise might be enough for a rom-com, right? Sure, especially since our expectations were lowered by that title, which is about as basic as buying bread at a bakery.
French girlSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: Gordon (Braff) can’t crack an egg without the shells sticking to the albumen, he burns toast, scorches a single slice of ham to within an inch of its life, and can’t tell the difference between mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce. In short: He’s a disaster at making breakfast, but Sophie (Brochu) loves him anyway, because he tries, he tries so hard. And he’s charming in a clumsy sort of way that fits Zach Braff’s M.O., which here is like Paul Rudd’s M.O. crossed with Woody Allen’s old M.O. He bikes to work in a tweed jacket and dresses like the Bard to give a Shakespeare lesson to his eighth-grade English class. that This is a very special kind of man. He wants to marry Sophie and asks her father (William Fichtner) for the wedding ring that is a family heirloom, the wedding ring that will inevitably be a key element of a physical corpse comedy later in the film. Very funny, I say. High-the river.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Sophie is a very good cook and is given the opportunity to be executive chef at a high-end restaurant in Canada, at the invitation of internationally acclaimed TV chef and restaurateur Ruby Collins (Hudgens). It requires cancelling her and Gordon’s vacation and heading to her hometown of Quebec, where they will stay with her parents and siblings while she competes for the job. Being a very caring and understanding person, Gordon says: Hey, come on, even though it will be awkward meeting your family for the first time.. Of course, the first impression he makes on his sweet mother Ginette (Isabelle Vincent) and his father, a slightly gruff farmer-butcher, Alphonse (Luc Picard) is bad, because he accidentally took a quaalude with a few glasses of wine during the flight – oh, oh, oh, my aching sides.
Luckily, Gordon recovers in time to meet Sophie’s slightly dimwitted brother (Antoine Olivier Pilon), who I like because he wears a Voivod heavy metal T-shirt. that is A first impression… and his grandmother Mammie (Muriel Dutil), who has dementia and is prone to the occasional quirky senior citizen moments you only see in stupid comedies. Gordon struggles to fit in among the manly men in Sophie’s family, as they like hockey and he likes figure skating, etc., etc. He’s a nice guy at heart, sensitive and considerate, and a little annoyingly endearingly neurotic, and you admire his effort. There’s legitimate love in his heart. Then he finds out that Ruby Collins is Sophie’s ex, and all of his annoyingly endearing neuroticisms start to boil over a bit. I feel like I should have mentioned that development earlier, and coincidentally, Sophie should have, too. Oops. Are we starting to feel like we’re sitting on an atomic bomb, waiting for it to go off? Yes. We’re starting to feel like we’re sitting on an atomic bomb, waiting for it to go off.
What movies will it remind you of? Meet the parents He really needs to get his premise back (using legal force if necessary) and lock him up for a while. Three or four decades should be enough.
Performance worth watching: Brochu is a sincere and deep-rooted force that French girl Need. Really need. Really In fact needs.
Memorable dialogue: Gordon is a little intimidated by Ruby Collins:
Sophie: I don’t care that he’s my ex. And you shouldn’t either.
Gordon: Well, that’s easier said than done when she looks like the future of the human race.
Sex and skin: Uh, not really.
Our opinion: Let’s just say French girl It’s not going to enter the ranks of recent romantic comedies that have been resurrecting the genre recently; it’s not Nobody but you, No hard feelingseither Whatever the name of that May-December episode with Anne HathawayThose movies stick to a formula, but are smart enough not to indulge in constant jokes about cowardly main characters being chased by overly aggressive swans, or delving into the nasty, nasty world of high-end chefs (if you want a smarter take on that, go see You will always be my maybethe underrated neo-standardizer who drops in on ALL these romantic games). There is a scene in French girl This places the film in a microcosm: Braff and Brochu are on a date eating vanilla ice cream. No sprinkles, no chocolate coating, no swirls. Pure vanilla.
That is to say, this mediocre material too often leaves Braff floundering like a fool while Hudgens struts and preens and Brochu is left to hold it all together by playing a character who actually seems like a real person rather than something that’s obviously written for the screen. I will say that Braff wisely corrects the slightly desperate slapstick, giving Gordon a gentle likability that allows him to say the right thing at the right time rather than dig himself a deeper hole like characters in much poorer comedies might. Not that French girl It’s particularly great, or even good: It’s a bit sloppy, but watchable, the plot unfolding in predictable fashion, from love triangle rubbish to crazy family rubbish. Between Braff’s watchable efforts and Brochu’s unseen efforts, there are enough decent moments here to warrant a recommendation. You might have to shift the goalposts before you press play, though: Low expectations often yield positive results, you know.
Our calling: This might be the most lukewarm STREAM IT I’ve ever written.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
