This was a pretty inventive French film that I really wanted to like. I picked up the video because it starred Pierre Richard, who I really liked in La Chèvre. However, unlike this later film, Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire wasn't really the wacky film I hoped it would be and I found Richard's performance to be a bit too restrained. In other words, the film was billed as a wacky parody of spy films but it just didn't get wacky enough--I expected something more. And, while Richard was occasionally clumsy or a little dim, his performance really wasn't all that funny. As a result, to me it's really just a time-passer.
The actual story idea is pretty creative. Two rivals within the French intelligence agency are at odds with each other. One decides to try and outwit the other by pretending to have a top agent who has incriminating information on his rival--hoping to get his rival to believe that some sap chosen at random is actually this agent. And, the supposed top agent is Richard. While I could go on and describe the plot further, it's probably best you just see the film. One highlight I really DID like was Richard's friend who kept seeing dead people at the end of the film. Yet each time he tried to show Richard, the bodies disappeared...making him seriously doubt his sanity. This was pretty funny, though the rest just seemed to miss the mark somehow.
The actual story idea is pretty creative. Two rivals within the French intelligence agency are at odds with each other. One decides to try and outwit the other by pretending to have a top agent who has incriminating information on his rival--hoping to get his rival to believe that some sap chosen at random is actually this agent. And, the supposed top agent is Richard. While I could go on and describe the plot further, it's probably best you just see the film. One highlight I really DID like was Richard's friend who kept seeing dead people at the end of the film. Yet each time he tried to show Richard, the bodies disappeared...making him seriously doubt his sanity. This was pretty funny, though the rest just seemed to miss the mark somehow.