Director: Albert Dupontel

Stars: Albert Dupontel, Virginie Efira, Nicolas Marié

French writer-director-star Dupontel’s madcap comedy has been a huge box office hit in France as well as a multi-Cesar award winner, but its charms may prove more elusive to British audiences.

It begins promisingly in what is presumably the near future as IT security expert and office drone JB (Dupontel) is fired from his company at the age of fifty to make way for someone younger. He attempts suicide but accidentally wounds one of his colleagues. His taped farewell message is witnessed by fortysomething hairdresser Suzy (Efira) who has just found out that she has a fatal illness and is desperate to find the child she gave up when she was a teenager. She makes a deal with JB that she will help clear him if he agrees to use his IT skills to track her child down. On their quest they are joined by Mr Blin (Marié), a hitherto cloistered and worryingly fearless blind archivist.

While the dedication to Terry Jones in the intro and a cameo from a certain other Python moots something a little more anarchic and spirited, the narrative merely pooters along amiably enough in a mildly absurdist manner. There’s a whiff of Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' too in the film’s depiction of a lowly salaryman becoming a reluctant hero as he takes on a merciless impersonal corporation, but save for a couple of nice visual flourishes, it lacks his film’s brio and leaps of imagination. The cast do their spirited best but they never really emerge as fully-rounded characters we can root for.

Bye Bye, Morons is released theatrically and available to stream on Curzon Home Cinema on 23rd July

David Willoughby

Follow David on @DWillCrackfilm