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Perhaps I shouldn't have laughed as much I did, but this French spy spoof by Michel Hazanavicius punches out cheeky gags and incorrect humour with the gusto of Zucker/Abrahams or Mike Myers in his Austin Powers heyday. There's a far higher comedy-factor than the dull Get Smart, and it's incidentally the most lovingly detailed period pastiche since Todd Haynes's Far from Heaven. In a week of overblown, unappetising or disappointing films, this makes a refreshing change. And how interesting to be offered a French movie that doesn't come straight from the "arthouse" stable.
It is an affectionate send up of a pulp-fiction character known as the "French Bond": Agent OSS-117, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, star of innumerable, deadly serious postwar thrillers by prolific author Jean Bruce. (The character actually predates...