Reviews & Ratings for
Le magnifique More at IMDbPro »

14 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
This film careens wildly through moments of high camp, pathos and outright slapstick, 15 March 2003
Author: Bob Angilly (staffba3) from Cambridge, Massachusetts

Albanian agents are smuggling missile platforms into Mexico. An American agent is devoured by a shark in a phone booth. Superspy Bob St. Cloud is sent to Acapulco to investigate. There he meets the beautiful Tatiana, but their romance is interrupted when they are attacked by an army of Albanian scuba divers, armed with machine guns. In the middle of the carnage, a cleaning woman pushes a vacuum cleaner up the beach. She enters the door of a small beach house where...

In a shabby Parisian flat, Francois Merlin, writer of cheap fiction, is pounding out his forty-third spy novel. He sees a young sociology student through the window of a nearby flat. Though he's never met her, she becomes part of his novel.

From this beginning French director Philippe de Broca (King of Hearts) creates a bizarre comedy of frustrated desires and fantastic dreams. Like Walter Mitty, Merlin creates a fantasy life within his novels far more exciting than his own.

French film star Jean-Paul Belmondo shows great versatility in a duel role as the campy hero Bob St. Cloud and the burnt-out Francois Merlin. Jacqueline Bisset is the vampish spy, Tatiana, as well as Christine, the sociology student who studying the popular appeal of Merlin's escapist novels. Vittorio Caprioli also plays a dual role as Bob St. Cloud's arch-enemy, the evil Colonel Karpoff, and as Merlin's smarmy publisher Georges Charon.

De Broca is a master of light comedy and his film careens wildly through moments of high camp, pathos and outright slapstick, as the story switches back and forth between the fantasy of Merlin's novel to the reality of his own life. In the end Merlin must battle his own fictional alter ego, as well as his publisher, for the love of the fair Christine.

11 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Surreal Camp, 10 January 2004
Author: Rob Williams from Los Angeles, CA

There are some cornball aspects to this film, but it also incredibly inspired in many ways. It is best not to read a bunch of summaries of the plot, just watch it and revel in the imagery which is fantastic in many parts. Belmondo is fantastic as is Jacqueline Bisset. If you already found sixties spy/agent films campy, this film will be a wonderful release, but also a haunting pastiche of dark humor on the whole genre. The jokes are layered very thick, not all of them hit, but compared to the campy schtick done in hollywood, this is shakespearean.

9 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
hysterical story within a story, 30 July 2003

Author: cinezonker-1 from L.A.

Seriously underappreciated comedy with one of the finest and funniest opening "twists" this filmgoer has ever seen. Belmondo is at his comic and athletic best and Bissett is gorgeous and perfectly cast as a student doing a research paper on pulp-fiction authors (Belmondo). To say much more would spoil the imaginative twists and turns in this film. If you can find it, watch it!

If you like Belmondo in this you might also enjoy "Up to His Ears" (1965)

The CineZonk

13 out of 20 people found the following review useful:
My name is Sinclar, Bob Sinclar. oops ..., 20 December 2004

Author: clong_clong from The outskirts of Paris

Bob Sinclar is the greatest secret agent in the world : he is handsome, strong, intelligent, unstoppable ... and he doesn't exist. You're irritated by the perfection of James (Bond) ? check this movie.

This movie looks old, and most of its jokes don't work as well as it worked 31 yrs ago, yet, this movie has to be seen. It is short, and there are some great findings (and some stuff are still funny too). Actually the concepts in the movie are better than the movie itself IMHO, but it's still a nice movie. When I was a kid I LOVED that movie so much !!!

BTW, I guess that the name Sinclar comes from who was James Bond at this time (Roger Moore) that was Simon Templar and Lord Sinclair on TV.

I almost forgot : if you're a man ... or a lesbian, Jacqueline Bisset is a sufficient enough reason to watch the movie.

" - coucouroucoucou coucouroucoucou

- VOS GUEULES !!!

- cou ... ou ..."

Check it out.

5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
First Half Genius, 7 May 2009

Author: radiobirdma from Afghanistan

The first half of "Le Magnifique" is postmodern tongue-in-cheek genius, a wild, ludicrous and in every department excellent mixture of James Bond spoof, splatter effects, slapstick, intertextual verve and romantic comedy clearly exceeding the ten stars limit, plus a downright irresistible Jacqueline Bisset (and I'm not even into brunettes). The second half, hmm, doesn't really come as a letdown, but sticks more to conventional vaudeville formulas and simply can't live up to the absurd roller-coaster folly already established, a few bitter tones possibly due to Francis Veber, a prolific and superb, but sometimes uneven writer who also worked on the script. The Canal Plus DVD features the French original as well as the English and German dub. As for comic dramas of the 70s, unorthodox and essential viewing.

6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Cleverly written and nice movie, 2 April 2000

Author: Dick van der Vennen (dickvdv@xs4all.nl) from Amsterdam, The Netherlands

This movie is a story about a writer which is maintaining and developing a character, which is a lot in contrary of himself. As a viewer you follow the man when he is writing the book, and you can follow all of his sometimes funny, sometimes exaggerated fantasies by the creation of the story.

It must have been a challenge for the script writer(s) to make this film not too difficult to follow, because it depends on good timing when switching the roles as they are growing during the story.

When you place the movie in its own time, it was one of those real Belmondo's: cleverly written, and full of terrific action, with often surprising acts. A nice movie!

5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Not another spy comedy, 9 January 2009

Author: kurciasbezdalas from Lithuania

Ussualy spy comedies are boring to me. James Bond was spoofed so many times, that it's not funny anymore (Get Smart (tv series) and Austin Powers is an exception). This movie would be also just another spy comedy, but some things make this movie different from other and even original. The plot is not usual to spy comedies. Actually there were two stories told in this movie - one about a poor writer, another is about a spy, who is a main character of the poor writers book. Both of them are played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, who was just brilliant in this movie. I liked his mimics of the face when he played Bob Saint-Clair (a spy). He played Bob Saint-Clair with some sort of irony and it was hilarious. Most of the jokes in this movie were slap-stick jokes, it looked weird sometimes, but that's probably what made this movie so funny.

4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
french tickler, 24 September 2005

Author: ThurstonHunger from Palo Alto, CA, USA

Anachronistic meets anarchic. This things still got some shelf life, although I do think its potency is somewhat diluted by time. And also perhaps by translation, I would bet there's some clever wordplay going on in parts that were lost upon me. I remember wondering what modern French audiences would think if they ran across "Airplane." Not a fair comparison, but not far off the mark...

The dual performance of Jean-Paul Belmondo is definitely a couple of cuts above what you would expect for a film that's basically a laugh lark. I mean the guy is often called upon to take splashy pratfalls, but has to play both virile playboy and nebbish nancy-boy. Yet if you take a still from any scene in the film you could immediately discern which one was on screen.

As Bob St. Clair, his overly self-satisfied smile would crack me up, something about its goofy gallantry reminded me of a sadly departed friend. Ken Hamilton, RIP. You shoulda met him...

Anyways back to the film...

I did enjoy the surreal slips between the film itself and then the book being created within the film. The first one I think was on a beach as the housecleaner blithely waltzes through soldiers storming the sands, vacuuming only to enter a door and voila. Additionally latter battles between the author and his protagonist and/or protagonista mostly worked for me. Though they dipped in shtick.

Afterwards, I watched some of it over with my young (3-year old) twin boys, and they liked it, I mean come on those mariachis with the mobile theme music, they were worth the rental alone. And um yeah, Jacqueline Bisset is beauty personified in this...

Not a lost classic in my book, nor auteur action...but le funny, certainmont.

6/10

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