Nous irons à Deauville

A great cast does not necessarily make a good film.

"We are going to Deauville" is a well-calculated comedy about two Parisian couples who share a vacation home in Normandy's mundane sea resort Deauville. The plot mixes practical jokes about the old house (like falling off window shutters and the running gag of non-working electricity) with some frivolous flirts of the protagonist couples and adds some satirical elements that make fun of the typical Parisien on vacation.

The dialogs may have been quite funny in their time, but the script has not aged well. Although some of the topics are really timeless and going on vacation on the French coast has remained pretty much the same since the 1960s, the jokes drop in far too slowly and lamely to make contemporary audiences laugh. Things that may have been risqué and funny then sound definitely dusty and worn these days. Most of the supporting roles are just too clichéd to be really funny.

Louis De Funès has a minor role, but his character does not fully exploit the misanthropic stubborn character he played in later films. I had initially hoped for a lot more Funès-like fun, I was then ready to accept a witty comedy as well, but I was disappointed both ways.

Two Parisian couples have gone to Deauville for their summer holiday: there they will have a lot of problems: the wicker trunk with their clorhes has not arrived, the villa they have rented is old .Then the plumber has come, but he spend his time speaking, eating and drinking. The owner of the house is an strange and nosy old woman. And then in Deauville there are snobbish people like the lady with the Italian chauffeur. Therre is also a character Ludovic Lamberjacques (played by Louis de Funès) who appears several times : on the road, on the beach, in tjhe delivery agency .Finally you are on holiday and on the beach you meeet your boss.

A satirical description of the Parisian tourists and also of the local people (store owners, plumber, garage owner) with a good cast : Michel Serrault, Claude Brasseur, Colette Castel, Pascale Roberts, Louis de Funès, Michel Galabru, Jean Carmet.

Produced by Sacha Distel's uncle ,Ray Ventura ,it is the third installment in the "Nous irons." (= we will go....)series ; for the record there's also "Nous irons à Paris "(1949) ,"Nous irons à Monte -Carlo"(1951),both directed by Jean Boyer, with music by Paul Misraki and Ventura himself .

Ray Ventura and his orchestra do not appear here ,but there are two or three songs , with a special guest appearance by his nephew . Only black singer Tony Milton's rocking tune is really exciting , the other songs ,if you can't say something nice......

Now for the film :Deauville was The Chic seaside resort on Normandy coast and to go there was the middle class' s dream :even though it meant renting a seedy house falling apart at every nail ; if you spent your vacation in this posh place ,you would impress your friends and neighbors .

There's a good cast , including Michel Serrault,Claude Brasseur ,Michel Galabru ,and Louis De Funès in a supporting part ; Roger Pierre and Jean-Marc Thibault appear in only one scene,but their gift of the gab is irresistible .Mary Marquet as the owner of the house near decay has a tendency to overplay though.

The thin thread is a trunk which never arrives ,in spite of the delivery man's so called efforts.(Jean Carmet);the film is deliciously dated with its "nouveaux francs " (=new francs ) and its surprise-partie (=party); Serrault licking his boss' boots is also good fun.

A small treasure this, a collection of super French actors, sacred monsters for later, here when they were still young, one and one: Louis de Funes, Michel Serrault, Jean Carmet, Michel Galabru, Claude Brasseur, Jean Richard, Eddie Constantine (in an episodic appearance). Nice musical number in the middle of the film by Tony Middleton (as Tony Milton), something in the genre of the great Solomon Burke. Also appears and sings a song the French veteran Sacha Distel. This is not a blockbuster, the film is simply a holiday film with trivial occurrences, as in life. Knowing the general current tastes (we live in the era of Star Wars and X-Men), this film is just for the fans of the actors present in the cast.