I wish my memories for LES COMPERES was sharper - but I saw it in Manhattan at the Paris movie house in midtown back in 1983, so I have to struggle a little. I do know this - the plot for FATHER'S DAY (which I just reviewed) is different in several ways, weakening the film's construction a little, but giving an outlet to the the two male characters that the French film left in the air.
Basically LES COMPERES is about how young Tristan Martin (Stephane Bieron) has an argument with his parents about his girlfriend, and flees with her. The mother Christine (Anny Duparen) goes and finds two previous boy-friends, Jean Lucas (Gerald Depardieu) who is a journalist, and Francis Pignon (Pierre Richard), who is an overly emotional teacher. She tells each that Tristan is their son - not the biological son of her husband Paul (Michel Aumont). And both (seperately) go after the boy - and soon find each other as a friend but rival in the issue of the boy's actual father.
LES COMPERES kept the activities of the film's comedy between Depardieu and Richard, and the confused Tristan. This is fine (the script was good and tight here). However, it missed out on some wonderful comic moments that appear in FATHER'S DAY, involving the father of the boy Bob Andrews (Bruce Greenwood). He hears his wife (Nastassje Kinski) on the phone with Billy Crystal about the issue of their son's parentage, and decides to go and find the boy himself. In the process he has a series of disasters involving a porto-potty at a gas station, and a clumsy (if good natured) truck driver (Dennis Burkley), that are very funny. But nothing like that occurred in the French original.
One thing that does get overly developed in the American remake (but was more effective, as it was used less frequently, in the French original) was "beaning". In FATHER'S DAY, Crystal demonstrates fairly early his ability to bean opponents on the head to knock them out or disable them. He repeats it several times. But Depardieu does not use it as frequently, and when he turns up at the end to use it against a particularly obnoxious and threatening individual he comes out looking quite effective as we are not expecting it from him.
SPOILER COMING UP:
At the end of both films, the boy privately tells both of his would-be fathers that each is his biological father, but should not say so to the other one (so as not to upset him). But in FATHER'S DAY, Crystal (a lawyer, not a journalist like Depardieu) confesses to his long suffering wife Julia Louis-Dreyfus that he could tell the boy was lying - he could tell from frequent experience in court. Also, unlike Richard, Williams has a potential romance in his future. As Crystal and Dreyfus decide to go ahead with their plans for a family, the characters in the American version have some kind of hope in their futures. But in the French version, the two would-be daddies end up secretly reassured of their own biological parenting of the boy. The French version is more organically complete as it is, but I do like the hope that is in store for the American counterparts at the end of the American version.
Basically LES COMPERES is about how young Tristan Martin (Stephane Bieron) has an argument with his parents about his girlfriend, and flees with her. The mother Christine (Anny Duparen) goes and finds two previous boy-friends, Jean Lucas (Gerald Depardieu) who is a journalist, and Francis Pignon (Pierre Richard), who is an overly emotional teacher. She tells each that Tristan is their son - not the biological son of her husband Paul (Michel Aumont). And both (seperately) go after the boy - and soon find each other as a friend but rival in the issue of the boy's actual father.
LES COMPERES kept the activities of the film's comedy between Depardieu and Richard, and the confused Tristan. This is fine (the script was good and tight here). However, it missed out on some wonderful comic moments that appear in FATHER'S DAY, involving the father of the boy Bob Andrews (Bruce Greenwood). He hears his wife (Nastassje Kinski) on the phone with Billy Crystal about the issue of their son's parentage, and decides to go and find the boy himself. In the process he has a series of disasters involving a porto-potty at a gas station, and a clumsy (if good natured) truck driver (Dennis Burkley), that are very funny. But nothing like that occurred in the French original.
One thing that does get overly developed in the American remake (but was more effective, as it was used less frequently, in the French original) was "beaning". In FATHER'S DAY, Crystal demonstrates fairly early his ability to bean opponents on the head to knock them out or disable them. He repeats it several times. But Depardieu does not use it as frequently, and when he turns up at the end to use it against a particularly obnoxious and threatening individual he comes out looking quite effective as we are not expecting it from him.
SPOILER COMING UP:
At the end of both films, the boy privately tells both of his would-be fathers that each is his biological father, but should not say so to the other one (so as not to upset him). But in FATHER'S DAY, Crystal (a lawyer, not a journalist like Depardieu) confesses to his long suffering wife Julia Louis-Dreyfus that he could tell the boy was lying - he could tell from frequent experience in court. Also, unlike Richard, Williams has a potential romance in his future. As Crystal and Dreyfus decide to go ahead with their plans for a family, the characters in the American version have some kind of hope in their futures. But in the French version, the two would-be daddies end up secretly reassured of their own biological parenting of the boy. The French version is more organically complete as it is, but I do like the hope that is in store for the American counterparts at the end of the American version.