Michael Neumann Meet the Groseille family, every upscale parent's living nightmare and no doubt the shabbiest collection of trash outside of a John Waters film. Compare them to the Le Quesnoy household on the other side of the tracks: respectable, comfortably privileged, and soon to have their upper crust complacency shattered when a long-lost son, raised by the wayward Groseilles, returns home to corrupt his true family.The film is a mixed bag, at best a mildly amusing social satire mocking the pretensions of a bourgeois yuppie lifestyle, but it's never clear if the prodigal son's lack of class is genetic or environmental: in other words, is the kid rotten because of his blue-collar upbringing or his white-collar breeding? The scenario also lacks the mean streak this kind of story needs. Except for the exploding car in the pre-credit prologue (a tremendous hook, barely acknowledged afterward) the film is perhaps too faithful to its title: long and quiet instead of short and nasty.

bobgask Unlike the feel good, "everything turns out for the best," "innate human goodness" fluff comedies that we see in the US, this film is based on the proposition that, under pressure, everyone falls to the level of the lowest common denominator.Years in the past a scorned nurse/lover switched newborns to spite the doctor who was the subject of her ire. When it was revealed, in the present, that these families from opposite sides of the track had each raised the other's son to his early teens, they set about to make it right. After all, there was enough success to go around. Right?Rather than bringing everyone up to the level of the wealthy politician's family, however, the children (siblings included) become a lot of foul mouthed, cigarette smoking, truants who enjoy their delinquent lives to the fullest. Naturally, the parents follow suit.No one is immune. The film is a keeper, though the humor is decidedly French and some subtleties are likely lost in the translation.

toad-1 This film is perhaps my favorite French comic film. I have seen it over and over through the years, perhaps 50 times. Having lived in France, I relish it's send-up of two stereotypical French families and their attitudes and interactions with each other as well as with institutions: the church, schools, the medical profession, foreigners among them, etc. As I see it over and over, it is my delight to concentrate on one character or another as they delineate a stereotypical trait. The subtleties are hilarious, yet I can imagine those who have never lived among the French might be bewildered, even turned off.

spud-41 True, this is not the best movie ever made. It is, however, extremely funny. One cannot truly realize why this is such a ridiculous movie until they know the the french culture. It is not a study in the class differences, it is to exaggerate the extreme opposite ends of the spectrum. The rich family is so stable it is almost hokey, and the poor family is so dysfunctional that they are almost stable. All of the comments about life are only to exaggerate the situation. I particularly love the scene in the church with the musical, it just goes to show how silly things can be. I don't watch this movie over and over for the plot, I watch it because every time you see it you notice something now that is characteristically French. Personally, I think it is great.