Luis Rego Movies

This broad French comedy emulates the much-better film A Hard Days Night in casting the Charlots, a French popular music group, to carry the story about a zany group of cut-ups who are drafted into military service. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Six vacationers from France find themselves on the sunny shores of Africa in a vacation village where organized fun is the order of the day. Spoofing such faddish getaways as "Club Med," the story focuses on the trials of a married couple who can't quite live up to their ideals of an "open" marriage, an overweight man who insists on trying to ski, a bore who cannot be gotten rid of, and a variety of small-time womanizers. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This comedy features large French woman, Balasko, who, when dumped by her fiance, moves in with a silly model. ~ All Movie Guide

This routine farce is about a lowly police inspector who falls for a sophisticated woman, unaware that she is involved in fencing stolen art. He pursues her with undying diligence until they finally get together -- but by that time they are on the wrong side of the law and in trouble. As usual with director Patrice Leconte, Michel Blanc plays the lead. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In an unsuccessful attempt to adapt the "Junior" cartoon strip by Georges Wolinski to a live-action movie, director Patrick Schulmann has been unable to capture the tension he first poses between a father (Aldo Maccione), once involved in the 1968 May student demonstrations, and a son (Junior, played by Riton Liebman) who is a buttoned-down conservative. One of the scenes with unrealized potential is when both father and son separately try to extricate a young man from his unwanted job at a brothel. As in some other adaptations from cartoons, the actors are unable to get past the limitations of the script. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In a storyline that brings together an odd assortment of characters, director, co-scripter, and editor Jacques Rozier has fashioned some humorous segments in this New Wave-influenced creation. Two ticket inspectors, Le Garrec and Pontoiseau (Bernard Menez and Luis Rego), are working the Maine-Ocean train to Brittany when they come across a Brazilian samba queen (Rosa-Maria Gomez) who defies all attempts at communication. Later on, a female attorney on the train is shown in court as she and her client, a sailor charged with assault, twist their tongues around a defense and decisively lose their battle with the French language. Circumstances conspire to bring the train conductors and the samba queen, among others, together on an island off the Brittany coast, where a dance rehearsal gets underway with disastrous results for one of the conductors. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This slapdash comedy is the first in ten years featuring the chaos-provoking talents of the Charlots, who, according to legend, are a group of men who came together while on military service together. In fact, they are a group of comics responsible for at least four other silly movies which (along with this one) fall into the "guilty pleasures" category. In the story, Antonio returned to Portugal ten years ago with his lovely (and quite thin) French wife. She has since become quite a hefty specimen of womanhood, and his eye has lately been wandering to others. When his strong-tempered wife catches him with another woman (their neighbor), she bonks him on the head. In order to avoid further embarrassment, he pretends this has induced amnesia. He does so well in his pretense that his worried wife calls his old Parisian buddies (the rest of the Charlots) and asks them to come and help revive his memory. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A former schoolteacher turned film distributor, Jean-Pierre Jackson made his directorial debut with this French comedy about two losers. When alimony payments catch up with Felix (Philippe Chevaillier), his furniture is seized. After a decade-long marriage, Raoul (Regis Laspales) leaves his wife. The two team for a job with Le Gai Vendangeur (The Jolly Vintner) as sales reps, but they score zero while tooling around Brittany in a silly station wagon decorated with an immense wine bottle atop the vehicle's roof. However, when they're joined by friendly, sexy Eliane (Cecile Bois), sales surge. The wine pours, and so does the money. Life is sweet, but it all turns sour when an affair begins between Felix and Eliane, much to Raoul's regret. The film's soundtrack includes Xavier Cugat. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

In this bittersweet look back at the trials of growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Emilie (Magali Woch), Ines (Ingrid Molinier), Stella (Julie-Marie Parmentier), and Marion (Camille Rousselet) become friends as they share the humiliations that are a part of adolescent life -- going to school, dealing with your parents, dealing with the emotional abuse of your peer group. La vie ne me fait pas peur spent several years in production; during a layoff in shooting, director Noemie Lvovsky shot a television film with the same characters entitled Petites, and later incorporated footage from the TV project into this film. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Caroline Ducey, who previously gained fame by bearing it all in the 1999 dour erotic drama Romance, stars in this drama set in the 14th century. Alienor (Ducey) is provincial lass who puts her skill with herbal cures to use by healing the festering boil on the king's leg. He rewards her with offering her a husband of her choice. Unfortunately, the betrothed Court Bertrand de Roussillon (Melvil Poupaud) refuses to consummate the marriage. Not a woman to let such a setback keep her down, she resolves to use her healing powers to loose her hymen by any means necessary. This film was screened at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

The foibles of a group of genial eccentrics scattered through the city of Nantes set the stage for this comedy-drama, taking place during one particular Wednesday. Martin Socoa (Vincent Lindon) is a well-meaning loser juggling more than his share of problems when, after a marathon card game, he remembers it's his day to look after Victoria (Victoria Lafaurie), his daughter from his first failed marriage. It's an especially bad day for Martin to play babysitter; he needs to close an important deal at work, he has a court date involving unpaid alimony, and his girlfriend (Catherine Frot) thinks its time she gave him the boot. Meanwhile, a group of kids discover a three-year-old who has managed to wander away from his parents, and they watch after him for the rest of the day, preferring not to get any grownups involved. Elsewhere, as Chief of Police Pelloutier (Olivier Gourmet) has to deal with unrepentant shoplifter Marie Therese (Armelle), his wife Marie (Anne Le Ny) prepares for a trip out of town related to her position in the Navy, even though she's in the last month of pregnancy. And two pairs of love-struck teenagers each figure out their own ways to slip away from their parents as they set out for a romantic trip on the Loire River. The film's French title, Mercredi, Folle Journee!, roughly translates into English as Wednesday -- Crazy Day!; one unstated plot point that may be lost on audiences outside Europe is that many French schools are traditionally closed on Wednesdays. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide