Merci Docteur Rey! (2002)
Runtime: 1 hr 32 mins
Genre: Comedies
Starring: Dianne Wiest, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Birkin, Jerry Hall, Simon Callow
DVD Info
Release:
Aug 9, 2005
DVD Features:
Audio:
- (unspecified) - French
- Subtitles - English, Spanish - Optional
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Reviews
An arch, clumsy effort...not only poorly written but ineptly staged... Mercy!
Merci Docteur Rey, which occasionally works as a passable farce, stoops to the sight gag of vomit.
While the cast of Merci Docteur Rey gives it a good shot, this romp stumbles a bit.
It's as if Litvack tossed all these bad gags, multiple storylines and kooky characters into a blender and hit puree.
What is all too apparent on the screen is a general pointless ineptitude, particularly dire in circumstances which require both material and handling to be done with the most effervescent of skill.
In this comedy of murder, there is exactly one laugh, involving a dress and wallpaper, which is one more than there is of a real human moment or emotion.
There's much ado about very little in this flimsy, fallible Gallic comedy/melodrama which confounds with its complex, voyeuristic incongruity.
This is less a coming-out tale than a showcase for late-middle- aged hysterical divas in flowing caftans to yell, scream and ride roughshod over the young homosexuals who are nominally the movie's center.
With Yank Andrew Litvack pinch-hitting for producers Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, Merci is free of much of that M-I pomposity, replacing it with an unnerving drollness.
It comes off as forced wackiness of the worst kind, at once cloddish and faux-sophisticated.
Lacks the sophistication it needs to be truly effective, hopelessly lost in its unfunny gags and weak plotting.


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