J'ai faim!!! (2001) Reviews

• Comedy on the diet

  Superwonderscope2001-11-11

  Pathetic french wannabe-comedy where three friends decide to help a fourth one (Catherine Jacob) who just lost her lover(Yvan le Bolloc'h) who apparently went away with a skinny woman (Aleesandra Martines). They'll use any trick (huge diet, blasting the woman's home, dirty phone calls , ruining her job) to make the lover come back at home. Needless to say, that will have terrible effects on the heroïne's life. What may be a good idea for a screenplay is just another Gaumont-bourgeois-comedy made by and for 40-something women. Florence Quentin, director-writer, used to be Etienne Chatilliez(Tatie Danielle, Le Bonheur est dans le pré) screenwriter. She should go back to only writing for others. She has no ability of directing anything but a TV movie for sunday evening. Catherine Jacob can be REALLY funny when a real director is behind the camera : consider Bertrand Blier's Merci la Vie, Patrice Leconte's Les Grands Ducs or Pascal Thomas' Les Maris les Femmes Les Amants and you'll see a real actress at work. Here, she just does her fat woman deciding to go slim again routine and it's exhausting. Check nout the body double half her size for her bare scenes : it's a blast!!!! Same for Michel Laroque & Garance Clavel, back to the funny looks & faces that made them famous here in France. No originality, ugly photography, badly scripted and directed...it looks like a one-joke short extended to an hour and a half "movie". Just to say that most of the men are pigs and women -if they stick together- can be the worst creatures on earth to avenge their honor by destrpying lifes. Nothing new, really and all but cliché-ridden, gross caricatures of human beings. The punchlines fall into oblivion, the timing is always in a hit-and-miss situation...Except a line or two, you won't get many laughs. The tagline for J'ai faim!!! (translation: I'm Hungry!!!)is "a diet comedy". Indeed : you get a screenplay on the diet, 0% sense of comedy -timing and a laugh-free product. Superwonderscope says : 2

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