Signé Furax

1981, France, directed by Marc Simenon

The film derives from a 1950s radio show with which I have no familiarity whatsoever and thus no sense of fidelity to the original. Absent that knowledge, the film came across as something close to a French Zucker-Abrams-Zucker film, with the scattershot approach to visual jokes, verbal gags of both high and low levels, absurd plotting, and general zaniness, though the hit rate was a good bit lower than in the best ZAZ outings. In other words, for every decent part there were a couple of sections that just didn't work for me, although the bit-part appearances kept the interest up (Coluche's appearance was abbreviated in the extreme, two quick scenes). I had not made the connection before but the film was directed by Georges Simenon's son, and there is a brief and reasonably subtle reference to the paternal oeuvre near the end. Simenon fils did not have a distinguished directorial career, mostly assisting on a variety of (high-profile) comedy films in the 1960s before a short career as a director himself.