Comedic series usually falter down after the third opus, when even the most forgiving audience can't overlook the enormity of a half-assed script and the lousiness of half-baked gags.
But every golden rule has an exception and "The Troops of St. Tropez" series is the perfect illustration that the antidote to these detestable screen symptoms has only only ingredient: star-power. Louis de Funès was a living audience-drainer. After the 1964 hit, the team could adapt to the craziest formulas, they were fishes out of water in New York City, they got married, they were set apart and reunited, they even fought Aliens and each time, the film never attracted less than four million viewers. Neither did "The Troops and the Troopettes" despite challenging every notion of bad taste and dated humor.
Maybe it was time for the series to end. Maybe the sight of a frail-looking De Funès was an indirect reminder of the living thunderbolt he used to be. Maybe watching him trying to hold his grimaces and gesticulations was like watching the Lemmon of "Grumpy Old Men" while reminiscing "Some Like it Hot". Maybe a seventh opus would have put a deathblow on his winning streak. But the actor died three months after the release, reputation unsoiled and legacy ensured by millions of viewers and trillions of laughs. His death was a sad time for French cinema but came at a good timing because the torch was being passed to a new breed of humor, screwball Pierre Richard under Veber's sophisticated direction or biting satire with the Splendid Troop. The days of glory were over and a crisis-stricken France generated a more mature audience craving for some social commentary behind the jokes.
Even Jean Girault (who died during the filming of "Troopettes") and De Funès felt the change of wind and made a different movie with "The Cabbage Soup", a film that showed the loneliness of isolated farmers and the effects of modernity in rural France. Looking up my "Cabbage Soup" review, I said it was the penultimate movie of the old-time partners and their ultimate classic if we forgive the final "Gendarmes" movie in 1982. I'm glad I didn't say "forget" or "dismiss" but I suspect I'll be in a minority if I say that the ultimate de Funès' movie wasn't the ultimate outrage many fans claim it to be... I concede that some parts can be outrageously bad but outrageously and uninterestingly are two separate words and in-between, there is a realm of enjoyment that prompted me to wear my 'devil's advocate' coat. Sure it is a turkey but I would say, a turkey... à l'orange!
Addressing the elitist section of movie fans, cinematic purists or the cohort of cinephiles drooling over anything stamped "Nouvelle Vague", I say, yes, your honor, "The Troops and the Troopettes" is a never-ending series of outdated jokes, over-the-top tantrums and cringe-worthy exploitations of women that make Benny Hill look like Monty Python, not to mention some unnecessary racist jokes... yet there wasn't one second in the film where I was bored, which I guess is a basic accomplishment for a comedy. The first "Troops" movies had their slowest moments and their share of lame gags but they were never as daring and bold as the last onzq... and I've got to admire a movie that pushes the level of bad taste up to eleven, if it doesn't make you laugh, it finds a way to impress you. What's more impressive is that the film manages to be driven by a plot, crazy-nun driving but driving nonetheless.
Four new recruits who all seemed to come up from Givenchy ads, and naturally catch the eye of our six gendarmes, one has a double effect because of her ethnicity as it seems that our old Frenchies aren't accustomed to the sight of an African woman. Now, ethnic gags were hit-or-miss with De Funès, it was a disaster in "The Tattoo" but hilarious in "The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob". The references to Macumba's origins are so redundant it stops being funny but the film insists so much that it ends up ridiculing the Troops, not the woman, the film even uses the beginning of a racial slur as if it really highlighted some old colonial bigotry, it's not as subtle as in a Tarantino movie, but it's so outrageous it becomes inoffensive. We forgive them, they're just out-of-touch old guys, De Funès, Galabru, Jacques François, even the youngest ones (Guy Grosso and Michel Modo) can't hide their white hair and balding sideline while Patrick Préjean and Maurice Risch provides the 'young' touch... which isn't saying much.
What's more to forgive? Well, the plot is an improbable salad made of James-Bond like situations and stunts, improvised choreographies, cartoon gags, vaudeville hysteria with a Claude Gensac more excitable than ever and Grand Guignol histrionic mimics where it seems that Galabru waited for the final film to have the upper vocal timber on Cruchot. The whole thing is insane, indigestible, noisy but it has a few sweet and tender moments. And amidst that brouhaha, something happened I didn't expect, it opened my eye on the notion of "over-the-top" and made me accept that there comes a moment where comedy needs to stop being too subtle and just implode its ugly irreverent side to the face of the earth.
Interestingly, the very actors who dethroned De Funès would play in similar over-the-top movies in the 90s, but in 1982, they wanted their idol to star with them in their movie "Gramps is in the Resistance" but fate decided otherwise, Galabru played the "Gramps" part and the film was dedicated to his long-time partner. But one can't watch "Troopettes" with bitter eyes for the role that made him a star was the perfect swan song for Louis de Funès. In a way, the film is about a bunch of "gramps" who are resisting... the march of modernity through one last musical march across St Tropez.
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