Golden Boy

A film whose topic is one of the western society's major problems: unemployment, "Golden Boy" evokes the French populist cinema of the thirties. Moreover, several sides of the story show that the movie is very influenced by Frank Capra's works. Unfortunately Jean-Pierre Vergne's movie can't hold a candle to any of Capra's movies.

The three most obvious adjectives to qualify this movie are: labored, dull and above all flat. The movie exudes a nice and harmless comic but it seriously lacks of cutting. Then, a nonexistent and listless directing, several hackneyed or predictable situations, a poor script don't help matters. All these factors can explain the commercial and critical failure of this movie when it was released in 1996.

At last, even Jacques Villeret who is however one of the finest comic actors that French cinema gave us can't save this firm (you said it) from mediocrity.