Le routard

For the uninitiated, Le Guide du Routard is France's best-known travel guide - a scruffy, good-natured bible for backpackers and budget wanderers, sold in every train station and supermarket since the 1970s.

Christian Clavier's in it - barely. Not even playing the pompous bourgeois he's made a national institution. The rest? Flabby gags, paper-thin dialogue, and a cast trying to inflate a flat tyre of a script. Michel Blanc, poor soul, looks like he's wandered in from a better film and realised too late it's his swan song.

Writer Philippe Mechelen, of Les Tuche fame (yes, that explains a lot), dusts off a relic of early-2000s French comedy: when mediocrity strikes, distract the audience with an exotic backdrop and half-baked adventures à la Tintin. It worked once (Le Boulet), stumbled twice (Safari, RTT), and faceplants completely here.

Le Routard coasts somewhere between travel brochure and tax write-off. The "product," it seems, isn't the movie - it's the brand tie-in. The guidebook sells, Marrakech looks lovely, and the film itself vanishes like a cheap postcard: proof only that it existed.