Customer Reviews

Oss 117: Lost in Rio

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

More Gallic silliness with Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, the pride of French intelligence, this time in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil of the 60s. This spoof of early James Bond films works so well because everyone connected with this farce is on the same page starting with the star, Jean Dujardin, a Sean Connery look-a-like. Adapted from the series of OSS 117 books by Jean Bruce, with a screenplay and direction by Michel Hazanavicius, the politically incorrect tone is sustained in almost every scene.

Dujardin's blithe, glib, ignorant arrogance propels him from one massive faux pas into another as he somehow manages to stay alive and maybe even fulfill his mission, this time tracking a microfilm that compromises the State and necessitates stopping a Cold War Nazi blackmailer.
The look of the film perfectly captures the style and tone of 60's movies, with great vintage film colors and tints, upgraded a touch from OSS's last outing which was set twelve years earlier in Cairo of the 50s.

For fans of 60's spy films, here's more absurd fun and offensive humor that ranges from Rio's sunny beaches, through luxuriant Amazonian forests, down into the depths of secret grottos and up to the top of the outstretched arms of the gigantic Christ the Redeemer statue. It's a twisted visual metaphor that works as a fitting finale.

Wherever danger lurks, whatever the inappropriate remark, you can count on Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath to be there -- and blithely make things worse.

I was watching late-night TV - channel surfing, and caught the tail end of one of the OSS117 movies. I speak enough French to keep up with the dialogue and couldn't stop laughing. Guy typifies French view of the world!!

I saw the Trailer for Lost in Rio at the Music Box in Chicago and had to see this movie. Jean Dujardin is the Suave, Hip Counter-Intelligence Spy the World needs! OSS 117 asking the German Embassy if they have a list of ex-Nazis hiding in Brazil is so funny because He is so sincere with his request. The movie is in French with subtitles but still an enjoyable Action Comedy. France's Greatest Spy? That is for others to decide.

It was inevitable, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath is back after his intro in the great sixties spy spoof of 2007, 'OSS 117-CAIRO-NEST OF SPIES' and is not quite up to snuff. Yeah the sight gags and various hommages are filmed quite excellently, we have hommages to the Matt Helm/Dean Martin films actually including Dino singing 'GENTLE ON MY MIND' and 'EVERYBODY LOVES SOMEBODY', the excellent circus film by director Carol Reed 'TRAPEZE' and Alfred Hitchcock's 'NORTH BY NORTHWEST' and 'SABOTEUR' in a clever blend, but the sequences never jell. The character comes off as a racist, pretentious, male chauvenist which may have been touched on but never brought out in the sixties euro spy films but again, this is a spoof. Jean Dujardin plays the agent a little on the nervous side, his first adventures performance seems to be more in check, the acting seems like he's throwing away the character rather than embracing it as he did so well in 'NEST OF SPIES'. The direction by return director Michel Hazanavicius is fast and furious, piling on the cliches in rapid succession as though he was in competition--Against whom and why? Having the OSS 117 character in a recurring series is a great idea but lets hope the next one gets back to basics and not have to wallow in its own absurdities. The talent behind and in front of the camera is there. It was definitely lost in translation this time out on this genre lover.

I felt that the racial jokes* were a little stronger on this one than the first. I especially loved the jokes made in the elevator. I loved this movie just like the first although overall, I liked the first just a small tad more (just a tad). The main actress is very attractive. The story is a bit all over the place and at times doesn't seem likely, but what can you say when you've spent a good hour and a half watching a great comedy.

While OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies was one of the smartest and silliest spoofs to come off the Continent in years, sadly this followup falls into the all-too familiar sequel trap of, having used up its best gags first time round, playing up variations on the same but a bit larger in the hope that the overplaying will make the material funnier. Much of the time it doesn't.

Not that Jean Dujardin's wonderfully smug, xenophobic and heroically unaware reinvention of Jean Bruce's (serious) 50s-60s spy isn't still a wonderfully obnoxious creation - the kind of person who doesn't think Brazil is a dictatorship because the weather is too nice, thinks hippies are people who have sex with horses, Judaism is "a religion that forbids sausages" and who blithely goes into the German embassy to ask for a list of prominent ex-Nazis, he's anti-Semitic, sexist, De Gaullist (there's one wonderfully uncomfortable pause when the subject of French collaborators is raised) and so entrenched in his bourgeois values that he even beats up a Nazi's son for badmouthing his war criminal father.

But while there are some fun moments en route to its North by Northwest inspired climax on Rio's giant statue of Christ the Redeemer, not least an inspired hospital chase where Dujardin and the villain wake up in the same hospital ward, it doesn't quite work enough of the time this time round. Some ideas are better on paper than the screen, such as the opening that takes the notion of the 'expendable' Bond girls to near-Apocalyptic extremes, but unlike the first film it never looks and feels right. Whereas Cairo went to remarkable lengths to recreate not just the production design, wardrobe, directorial style and even film stock of 60s spy movies, aside from the film's plentiful split-screen montages this often feels more like video than film, taking it out of the time it was set. But while that may be a simply cosmetic sin, more troublesome is the way that parts of the film often drag and feel underdeveloped. There's still enough in the film that's fun to make it worth a look, but with too few standout gags and not enough genuine panache to stop it from being a disappointing step down from the original.

A French spoof of, well, a lot of things; but primarily James Bond and Alfred Hitchcock. The film reproduces the look and much of the style of movies of the mid-Sixties and does so masterfully. The film parodies the style but hews closely enough that it could easily be just an extreme example of an actual Sixties film. The protagonist, played by the amazing Jean Dujardin, is cheerfully oblivious to his obliviousness in the way of Peter Sellers' Clouseau and Will Farrell's mainstream Hollywood characters (but in a film with wit and intelligence beyond any of those mainstream Farrell comedies).

He's baaaack. That glib smile, that infectious laugh, that receding hairline, those mischievous eyebrows and, let's not forget, that prêt-à-porter wardrobe. In OSS 117: Lost in Rio, French comedic actor Jean Dujardin returns for another, hilarious outing as the secret agent code-named OSS 117. This time around, it's a doozy, as in "douze ans plus tard." OSS 117 is twelve years older and more inept than ever.

As with 2006's uproarious OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, this sequel also was adapted from the OSS 117 novels by Jean Bruce. Dujardin's Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath reads like an early "007" on acid. That he resembles Sean Connery's James Bond (circa Dr. No) while poking fun at Gallic arrogance lends parodic thrills and caustic political satire to his new, South American adventure.

Take note: The bumbling spy who can never seem capable of parallel-parking his flashy convertible, is *not* OSS double-one seven. "Non pas de tout." He's OSS "cent dix-sept"! Mais oui. Amid all the hijinx, Bonisseur de la Bath, who's flitting through Brazil's pristine beaches, scenic roads and tropical rainforests as evening newspaper reporter "Noel Flantier," tries his dogged best to get laid - thus, my title for this review. He possesses neither the dashing charm of Connery's Bond nor the rugged allure of James Coburn's Derek Flint (himself a parody of the debonnaire Bond) in Our Man Flint. Every time "petit Hubert" tries to take a "dip," it's a side-splitting laugh for us, the viewers. And oh, it hurts so good!

From the jump, the little birdies spying on Bonisseur de la Bath (prior to his assignment as Noel Flantier) and a lover in the sack are getting more action. Bad enough that the vacationing secret agent remains in his skiing ensemble while his sex mate is sprawled in a sheer, hot-pink teddy. Even funnier, wings of the fornicating (mechanical) birds flutter frenziedly to a devil-may-care tune breezing above the bed and out a window revealing an ethereal, midnight blue sky.

Rather than repeat what previous reviewers already have written since the OSS: Lost in Rio DVD was released last summer, I will list nine more scenes that had me on the floor choking with laughter. In no particular order: 1) the film's intro, with a never-ending twist (as in the jaunty dance -- after all, this sequel is set in the 1960s) and Bonisseur de la Bath's stupid smile while he's gyrating; 2) the split-screen depiction of Noel's arrival in Brazil, the enemy on his heels and a commercial samba score setting up the retro mood; 3) Noel yelling at his Nazi prey with a waterfall behind him that mutes his voice; 4) a Nazi's German stylings on the bossa nova classic "The Girl from Ipanema," replacing Astrud Gilberto's breezy "Ahhh" in the chorus with a chilly (and chilling) "Brrr"; 5) Noel's brash interrogation of two children living in a favela, with regard to the whereabouts of a Nazi whom he was sent to capture because he possesses an object that could compromise the honor and legacy of the French Resistance; 6) Noel's refusal to stop repeating a corny pun involving his spy name and his Christmas "boules" (his "Christmas present," he says to his unamused Israeli Jewish female Mod-stylin' espionage partner, Dolores, before trying the joke on a colleague telephonically); 7) Noel's sexual harassment of his aforementioned spy partner as their airplane plummets to their uncertain deaths; 8) Noel's misconstruing of the term "hippie sects" with "hippic sex"; and 9) CIA operative Bill Trumendous jarring Franglish and his grinning insults, to Noel's bewildered reaction, in the former's car.

However, one, wonderfully extended sequence that was worth the DVD's price -- a cost with the altitude of Cristo atop Corcovado -- occurs on a Rio beach at nighttime. Sometime after Noel unwittingly accepts LSD (to which he refers as the French abbreviation "RSVP" later in the film) from a hippie chick, not only is he lost in Rio but also he loses his clothing. He finds himself tripped-out with a group of hippies who are camped around a fire and, upon the acid's full effect, engaging in an orgy with them. If that weren't psychedelic enough, soul singer Minnie Riperton's chirpy 1970s ballad "Loving You" offers a starkly innocent contrast to all the naturalistic, writhing, carnal movements.

The orgy sequence's split-screen effect feels so perfectly vintage. Immediately I thought of 1968's The Thomas Crown Affair as well as early- to mid-'60s romantic comedies starring Doris Day. Dujardin's "backlit" partial nudity around the fire is arousing. Against the flickering images of lips on breasts and palms on buttocks, Noel's participation in the orgy lends his character sensual depth - as if the subtle flexing of Dujardin's arched eyebrows, though they're a thinner version of Connery's Scottish thickets, doesn't imply a soupçon of virility. That glow on Noel's countenance isn't the look of love; it's the blissful expression of "loving" the one you're with.

Caution: OSS: Lost in Rio makes no apologies for political incorrectness. In an OSS 117 film, savoir-faire is *not* everywhere. Nor is it anywhere. Throughout the movie, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath repeatedly shows why he is a bigot and an idiot by spewing forth anti-Semitic and misogynistic remarks. Sometimes he doubles up on offensiveness. If you can get through reruns of the satirical 1970s sitcom "All in the Family" without surfing to another channel, then you can endure OSS: Lost in Rio. Also, there's brief nudity, so combined with the un-PC nature of the dialogue, this is a film made for an adult audience. Or, put another way, it's one, cool European flick.

I'm rating OSS: Lost in Rio with five stars because it's outstanding entertainment and a top-notch parody of spy films past. If I have but one regret, it's that the film needed a more beguiling, or simply a more charming, female partner to play off Noel Flantier. That was a salient element in the 2006 OSS 117 film. Though, I must admit, to borrow somewhat from Nancy Sinatra, Dolores' boots are made for walking ... away from Noel's misguided seduction, that is.

It's an good movie, but only OK if you have seen the first one, OSS 117: the Cairo, Nest of Spies. Mainly for two reasons: the ambiance of the movies are not the same since the first one is a movie from the 50s, while that one definitely has that 60's taste. And the heroine Dolores is not as likable as Larmina was. But also, the Nazis were funnier in the first movie. On the other hand, the whole thing with the hippies is quite good. So yes, I liked it, the hero is still deliciously as clueless, arrogant, full of himself ( "Where others have adventures, I am an adventure" or "A legend, the best in my field...but that's not for me to say") and totally narrow-minded/racist, the result is a tad dimmer. And the music is not that good either, but again, the sixties...Still, it's a really good spy-movie spoof...
Excerpt:
( he spend the night at the Israeli spies' place)
Dolores: here, a toothbrush and pajamas .
OSS117 ( with a smile): thanks, but I'll only need the toothbrush...
Dolores (with a blank face): you do whatever you want. (Leave the room, leaving his baffled).

I wanted to see this movie based on a trailer I saw thinking it looked like some crazy spy spoof a la Austin Powers meets James Bond via Matt Helm. It tries to be but falls very flat. Maybe I just don't get French humor (then again they love the totally unfunny Jerry Lewis) but most of the jokes either went over my head (the intro where Agent OSS 117 calls everyone by name as he enters HQ has to be some sort of play on names that escapes me with the direct English translations in the subtitles) or were just plain cringe-inducing not funny.

There is one scene in a car where the hot Israeli Mossad agent babe basically rips OSS 117 a new one over his misogynist and racist comments. It rings more true than humorous.

The look of the movie works well as it is stylishly like you're transported into the Brazil of the 1960s. The split and multiple image screens are also way cool. Basically, the pic is let down by the terrible script and the lack of comic timing.

After all this movie has exotic locations, wild architecture, Nazis, masked wrestlers, Chinese hit men, Mossad agents and hot babes in states of undress so...why did it not work?

The extras are all in French with no subtitles by the way at least on the copy I had.