Two mediocre jewel thieves constantly find themselves outwitted by a more intelligent criminal known as "The Angel". The Angel likes playing cat-and-mouse games with them : for instance, he sends one of them a magnificent cake as a birthday surprise. This calls for revenge. Following the trail of their nemesis, the two mediocre thieves arrive at a large villa that belongs to a British expert on Indian culture...
"Un drôle de colonel" is a farce. Needless to say, it comes with a number of age-old conventions proper to the genre : mistaken identities, unexpected visitors, disguises, fake moustaches, silly accents and so on. In spite of its excellent cast it's not particularly funny. (Still, there's a rather funny feminist twist at the end.) One gets the feeling that the various actors bravely tried to make the best of it, while knowing that they were appearing in a work destined to sink under the waves. An exception is the deeply miscast Jean Yanne, who seems to have given up entirely and just spends most of his time screaming and barking.
"Un drôle de colonel" is set in Great-Britain, which is rather strange considering that both the cast and the acting style are unmistakably Gallic. Surely it would have been a piece of cake to tell a tale not about a British colonel who's a specialist on India, but about a French colonel who's a specialist on Algeria, Madagascar or Indochina ? The costumes too are confusing. Are we talking about the 1930's or the 1960's ?
So no, I don't recommend the movie, since it represents a sad waste of comedic talent. Viewers who would like to see Maria Pacôme in a better comedy can watch "Le distrait". Her delirious "gazoo gazoo" scenes with Bernard Blier have become the stuff of legend.
"Un drôle de colonel" is a farce. Needless to say, it comes with a number of age-old conventions proper to the genre : mistaken identities, unexpected visitors, disguises, fake moustaches, silly accents and so on. In spite of its excellent cast it's not particularly funny. (Still, there's a rather funny feminist twist at the end.) One gets the feeling that the various actors bravely tried to make the best of it, while knowing that they were appearing in a work destined to sink under the waves. An exception is the deeply miscast Jean Yanne, who seems to have given up entirely and just spends most of his time screaming and barking.
"Un drôle de colonel" is set in Great-Britain, which is rather strange considering that both the cast and the acting style are unmistakably Gallic. Surely it would have been a piece of cake to tell a tale not about a British colonel who's a specialist on India, but about a French colonel who's a specialist on Algeria, Madagascar or Indochina ? The costumes too are confusing. Are we talking about the 1930's or the 1960's ?
So no, I don't recommend the movie, since it represents a sad waste of comedic talent. Viewers who would like to see Maria Pacôme in a better comedy can watch "Le distrait". Her delirious "gazoo gazoo" scenes with Bernard Blier have become the stuff of legend.