Watch out, turnip! Ten days without Mom is a bad family movie, because it's totally reheated. Franck Dubosc barely saves the day in this comedy, which not only boasts a distressing script, but also a string of clichés and a surprisingly disastrous performance from the rest of the cast.
First of all, let's be clear: family films are a noble genre. An unofficial genre, of course, that we like to watch in the living room with Mum and Dad or with our kids, but one that not only has its legitimacy and usefulness, but also its genius. What intuition and talent does it take to come up with something like Cabbage soup, Visitors I, Santa Claus is a scumbag or, more recently, First name and Cornelius or the howling miller! There's no doubt about it.
But, as we can never say often enough, every genre has its gems as well as its failures. If the commercial nature of a work doesn't tell us much a priori about its qualities or faults, the same applies to the vein of so-called family films. Any venture can be a success, a failure or a partial success, and ceteri, et cetera. And so, quite simply, an artist's intention is not necessarily reflected in the result. And that's how Ten days without Mom has no family except its audience.
Franck Dubosc barely saves this turnip
It has to be said that, apart from the presence of Franck Dubosc at the center of its cast, Ludovic Bernard's comedy has nothing going for it. Starting with the synopsis. Antoine, head of human resources at a major DIY chain, has a 50/50 chance of becoming the company's CEO. But then his wife, who takes care of everything at home, decides overnight to take a ten-day trip to the Cyclades with her sister, to unwind.
Well, you know the drill... Antoine finds himself on his own, looking after his four kids at a crucial time in his career. As you might have guessed, managing the household goes badly, because he's never been anything but busy at work. And, as you may also have guessed, he eventually realizes that he hasn't paid enough attention to his family.
If at least the family's adventures inside the house in the mother's absence were juicy, we could have laughed out loud, without thinking too hard, and gone home with a clear head. But no, nothing too wicked, and above all nothing new under the sun. The film is full of clichés about the father obsessed with his professional life, about human resources specialists who know nothing about human beings, about the mother who says «yes amen» to everything and then one day decides to take some time for herself, about the loving children who will make the father a better man. In short, it's a bunch of reheated nonsense. Worse still, the secondary actors, starting with Autre Atika (the mother), act as if they're in an advertising clip. To be avoided, unfortunately.
Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com
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