La Ch’tite Famille, starring, written and directed by Dany Boon - Seven out of 10

La Ch’tite Famille, starring, written and directed by Dany Boon

Seven out of 10

This comedy seems to be a sequel – or is it prequel? – to the very successful, at least in France, film Bienvenue Chez Les Ch’tis.

Notwithstanding that first accomplishment, the latest descent into a very strange dialect does not seem to have the impact of the first, which was anyway hard to engage with for audiences outside the Hexagon.

In the Welcome to the Sticks, a man from Provence is sent to work in the far North, where he finds it impossible to communicate with locals that seem to speak some foreign tongue.

Recently, this has been a subject for the news, when the leader of the extreme left, Jean-Luc Melenchon has been aggressive to a journalist who spoke this strange dialect, which he pretended not understand, asking for a question in French.

This was not just preposterous, it was outright offensive, pretentious, ignoble and stupid, and coming from a self-proclaimed leader who cares for those left behind, including the uneducated and citizens who do not speak the tongue of the Paris elite…

Dany Boon is the writer – director who also has the leading role of Valentin Duquenne, a designer architect who has left the northern region with its dialect to become a phenomenon in the capital.

He pretends to be an orphan, which in one scene would cause his father, Jacques Duquenne aka the legendary comedian Pierre Richard, to take his car up in the air, in a revenge for this offense, even looking like he may shoot his prodigal son that has denied his origins.

Valentin is ashamed to assume his origins in a less than developed region, as the son of scrap metal merchants.

However, his family would be coming to him.

The celebrated architect is opening an exhibition, when the family he rejects comes out to surprise him.

They do, but not delight the estranged son and brother, as they have expected.

The celebrity is flabbergasted and wants to hide, taking refuge behind curtains, trying to evade the relatives.

His father-in-law, Alexander, has a fight with the hero, backs up his Mercedes limousine and hits Valentin so hard that he enters a coma.

When he wakes up, he has no memory of his life of the past years, his recollections stop at the moment when he was still with the ch’tis.

Therefore he talks in the same incomprehensible manner, does not know who his partner, Constance Brandt is and whines over a lost scooter.

Alexander arranges for elocution lessons, for there is no way that this primitive man could represent their business.

Meanwhile, the devoted, loving, flexible, understanding Constance starts talking that crazy language.

When questions are asked, it seems there is no French word that has an equivalent in the ch’tite patois.

Horse and all the other common words do not ring a bell for the newly born Valentin, who has only portable in common with Constance, but even that is uttered with a different sound.

Another tragedy is about to happen, for when he woke up from his coma, the protagonist is in love with his brother’s wife, with whom he has had a relationship in the past.

A fight ensues when his attention is more than platonic and Valentin seems to be determined to become intimate with his sister-in-law.

There are amusing moments, but not enough to make this more than a forgettable, light comedy.