Name: Retro Film Review: Guardian Angels (Les anges gardiens, 1995)
Item: Les Anges gardiens
Rating: 15
Author: @drax

(source: tmdb.org)

(SPECIAL NOTE: Capsule version of the review is available here.)

Thanks to their 1993 time travel comedy Les Visiteurs (one of few modern-day French films to spawn commercial sequels), Jean- Marie Poiré and Christian Clavier represent one of the most successful writer-director teams in the history of French cinema. In 1995 those two were very popular among the executives of French film company Gaumont and were consequently given unprecedented creative freedom and large budgets for their next project. Results of those efforts was comedy Les anges gardiens a.k.a. Guardian Angels.

Protagonists of this film are two men who are supposed to be the complete opposites of each other. Antoine Carco (played by Gerard Depardieu) is a man with a shady past and not much brighter present - he earns the living as an owner of the sleazy night club. Father Herve Tarain (played by Christian Clavier) is a priest who heads Catholic mission. When Carco's friend gets murdered by Chinese gangsters, Carco and Tarain unite their efforts in order to rescue friend's little son. Their efforts are impeded by sudden appearance of two "guardian angels" – their doubles who turn out to be complete moral opposites of their characters.

Guardian Angels had quite impressive cast (including Czech supermodel Eva Herzigova in one of her more revealing appearances), plenty of action scenes and CGI effects. Unfortunately, the film only sank under the weight of all this and turned into major disappointment. Although Clavier plays his role with some restraint, at least compared with Les Visiteurs and in the scenes that don't feature his character's evil twin, the quality of humour is way below the standards we could have expected from the makers of 1993 blockbuster. The most telling thing about Guardian Angels is Hollywood's reluctance to use it as an inspiration for American remake. Even Hollywood studios' heads probably knew how to spot spiritless "high concept" in this.

RATING: 2/10 (-)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on December 10th 2002)