Mandibles

Quentin Dupieux has always made strange films that usually can’t be categorized as anything other than bizarre. His filmmaking career seems to have culminated with Deerskin, which is his funniest and most coherent film to date. Mandibles feels like a withdrawn version of Dupieux though. There’s a giant fly, but we don’t see enough of her as we’re subjected to two morons trying to get a free pass on life. Its attempts at humor fall flat and it’s impossible to sympathize with or find any sort of entertaining qualities in any of the characters. Mandibles is really only going to be for hardcore fans of Dupieux’s other works. The average lifespan of a female house fly is 25 days, which is about three weeks longer than Mandibles will stay relevant in the public eye. Full review: https://hubpages.com/entertainment/Mandibles-2021-Review-An-Unfunny-and-Aimless-Comedy

There's not much in it, but "Jean-Gab" (David Marsais) is the marginally brighter of a pairing with his best pal "Manu" (Grégoire Ludig) who have been given a simple task by their boss for which they'll get 500 Euros. How hard can it be? All they have to do is drive. Well on their way, they start to hear a strange noise coming from the boot of their car. Stopping and opening it, they discover a fly the size of a family dog snoozing inside. Innovatively, they decide that if they can train this beastie, it could be far more use to them that the money they'd been promised for the job - so in best "A-Team" tradition, they come up with a scheme. Of course that doesn't go to plan as even they couldn't haven't predicted that "Manu" would be mistaken by passing travellers to be one of their former boyfriends and invited to stay at their holiday villa. "Cécile" (India Hair) seems convinced that "Fred" - minus a certain tattoo - is her ex-beau, but the hyper-sensitive "Agnès" (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is convinced that they are up to something "fishy". Now they have to find a way to train their (now quite peckish) fly, obtain a dog, and not get rumbled - oh, and their employer is looking for some explanations too. This is anything but predictable as these two nice-but-dim characters manage to keep this on the right side of farce for an eighty minutes that marries the silliness of the "Carry On" films with a little more psychologically based humour and, of course, a soupçon of David Croneberg as well. There's an amiable chemistry between Ludig and Marsais; Exarchopoulos manages to deliver a character that exasparates and entertains in equally quirky measure and it's good to know that the BBCs props department has put some old "Dr. Who" insects to good use, too. This is a good example of a director letting his characters and the writing do the work with a minimum of distraction and by keeping things tight, it's really quite good fun to watch.