Review | Bye Bye Morons movie review: César-winning French comedy is not funny in the slightest
- French filmmaker and Monty Python fan Albert Dupontel’s award-winning Bye Bye Morons is a screwball caper that, sadly, is achingly unfunny
- It tells the story of a terminally ill hairdresser looking for the son she gave up for adoption who teams up with a suicidal programmer and a blind archivist
2/5 stars
French filmmaker Albert Dupontel’s bureaucratic satire arrives on a wave of critical and commercial success. Opening at the height of the pandemic to impressive box office numbers in his home country, Bye Bye Morons went on to win six César Awards – France’s equivalent to the Oscars – earlier this year, including best film and best director.
One can only assume that the comedic prowess of this screwball caper has been lost in translation, as for all its dazzling production design and spirited buffoonery, the film is achingly unfunny.
The lack of chuckles is particularly baffling as Dupontel, who writes and directs, as well as stars, is a confessed fan of anarchic British comedy troupe Monty Python, and has declared the film to be his tribute to Terry Gilliam’s dystopian classic Brazil.
It is true that Bye Bye Morons is riddled with affectionate homages, from the lifting of character names (Tuttle, Kurtzman, etc) to the central quest through a frustrating labyrinth of bureaucratic red tape.
Gilliam even appears in a playful cameo, while the film is dedicated to fellow Python Terry Jones, with whom Dupontel collaborated before the former’s death in 2020. But any similarities to that masterpiece of Orwellian oppression end there.
Stone-walled by an uncooperative welfare system, Suze desperately teams up with J.B. (Dupontel), a suicidal I.T. programmer, whose botched attempt to blow his brains out at work has the authorities chasing him for attempted murder.
Completing their unlikely trio is Nicolas Marié’s histrionic archivist, who wants justice from the police, whom he holds responsible for the accident that has turned him blind. The stage is seemingly set for madcap antics to ensue, and yet the trio do little more than stalk a procession of young men who might be Suze’s long-lost son.
Of its six Césars, Carlos Conti’s win for production design is perhaps the most deserving. He brings a layer of exaggerated artifice to the film that heightens the playful absurdity of Suze and her entourage’s mission, as well as alienating them from the world around them, which seems more strange and unnavigable at every turn.
Beyond this flourish of visual flair, however, one can’t help but wish Bye Bye Morons on all involved.
