OSS 117: From Africa with Love

Imagine an aging French James Bond in 1981 sent to Africa on a mission and told not to appear either racist or misogynistic. This is the resulting film. Very enjoyable, as long as you understand the underlying humour and political situation - and, of course, performed brilliantly by Oscar-winning Jean Dujardin. The negative reviewers seem to misunderstand the underlying story and the background with which the film-makers have brilliantly dealt. It is not as laugh-a-minute as the original two films, but this is an OSS117 who is several years older and trying to cope with his decline in functions. I actually prefer this film to the original two - it is more developed upon the changing life of the main character - and it is still funny too!

I loved the two first films , back in 2006 and 2009. It took a long time before the third one of the franchise; Jean Dujardin seems to be the same and the overall structure and atmosphere too. I love his character, who is still the same, no matter the directing and overall story. He is the perfect, pure anti hero: idiot, mysoginist, racist, full of biases, uncultivated. This is precisely the purpose of this film, I repeat, forget the story itself. It is not the worst of the series and despite the fact that I don't like comedies, I prefer them compared to the sixties OSS 117 features, very "serious" ones, spy movies in the right fashion of those years, more or less 007 like movies. With the settings in Africa, this is of course the perfect location to instal the atmosphere of the franchise: lead character's racism, so obvious, and also the pretext to evoke the French politics since so many decades in Africa.

As always Hubert is very funny.

However if you except Jean Dujardin all the other characters are grotesque.

For the first time the country and the epoque are not really at the center of the story.

Here you are just following the mains characters in their adventure.

In short I would say it was fun to watch but no more...

Good movie, very well acted. Good James Bond parody. It's a bit crazy but unfortunately not enough crazy. It could have been a perfect comedy but it seems that fear of sounding racist and sexist keeps screenwriters, dialogue writer and filmmaker from really taking over more crazy. And this fear is gone to last for years.

I expected worse given the reviews I had read.

It's ok, but the script and writing simply aren't good. Mini OSS was obnoxious, poorly written character. The cast generally performs well, but there simply isn't much to go with. It's very linear, it's bland, there is no chemistry, some nice ideas but poorly utilized.

Some of the CGI is crap, but that wouldn't have saved the movie anyway.

Underwhelming overall.