2023-06-25 18:00:17
Unanimously taken down by the press on its release, the comedy by Alain Chabat and the Robins des Bois seems funnier than at the time. The film is available on Disney+ and Prime Video.
“RRRrrr!!! (RRRrrrr!!!)” by Alain Chabat. With Pascal Vincent, Pierre-François Martin-Laval, Maurice Barthelemy and Jean-Paul Rouve. At Wam’s
Published on June 25, 2023 at 8:00 p.m.
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His most brilliant ideas, Jean-Jacques Rousseau had them while walking. Maurice Barthélemy, he is more of a scooter. The Robin Hood was on his two-wheelers, hair in the wind (so to speak), when the inspiration for a film regarding the first crime in the history of mankind came to him. If the man is really good by nature, if he was a good savage, then it would indeed be really interesting to come right back to the moment when it all went downhill. In RRRrrrr !!! (three “R”, four “r”, three “!”), we discover that the first criminal lived 35,000 years before Jesus Christ, within a small community of prehistoric men who, moreover, had found the shampoo’s secret, arousing the jealousy of the tribe next door (with dirty hair).
Finally all that, it will be imagined later, and not on a scooter. First, we had to find a producer. The Robins des Bois (Maurice Barthélemy, but also Jean-Paul Rouve, Marina Foïs, Pierre-François Martin-Laval, Pascal Vincent and Élise Larnicol) first thought of Dominique Farrugia, at the helm of their big show, on Comedy! But the former Nul is appointed program director of Canal+, and entrusts the baby to a no less Nul, Alain Chabat. Who will produce, but also direct.
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In 2003, Chabat had recently become the undisputed master of comedy. Two films to his credit: Didier (1997), which attracted a fairly wide audience, then Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002) and its 14.5 million entries. Enough to raise 17 million euros, add Gérard Depardieu and Jean Rochefort to the cast, and gain respect when it comes to kicking the buttocks of the Robins, who dragged on to finalize their script. “Two months before the shooting, they locked us in a Parisian hotel so that we might finally move forward on the writing”, remembers Maurice Barthélemy twenty years later. “It was very effective. We worked from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Chabat supervised and added his touch. » Like what you can walk, ride a scooter or be locked up in a hotel: there are no rules for having good ideas.
It was a kind of playground humor with a lot of codes, something impossible to understand in five minutes.
To have ideas, in any case. For example: write an introductory text telling a story that has absolutely nothing to do with that of the film. Imagine that all the characters would be called Pierre, and would be able to recognize each other when we called « Pierre ! » What “on the 25th, it will be 800 years, this shampoo war”. That a guy would wait really badly, really, we wouldn’t have “never seen a guy wait so badly”. That Marina Foïs wouldn’t have hair under her arms when apart from shampoo, we haven’t invented much yet. That a guy, before nightfall, would go from cave to cave to announce “It’s going to be all black”, and would only have the satisfaction of a job well done by hearing a ” Shut up ! » firm in response.
Jean Rochefort, Gerard Depardieu and Alain Chabat on the set. At Wam’s
Any “good” ideas? Not so much, according to the press, generally unconvinced by the final product, and who wrote it. Les Cahiers du cinema: “The art of the Robins only targets themselves, their annealed tricks, their self-proclaimed flatness, their mediocrity made sketch” (Emmanuel Burdeau). The Figaroscope : “A script nothingness” (Emmanuele Frois). Positive : “The visual ugliness that seems to be the lot of big-budget French comedies is matched only by the poverty of the script” (Michel Cement). The echoes : “Heavier than Obélix’s menhir” (Annie Coppermann). Les Inrocks: “A strange shortage of gags” (Jean-Baptiste Morain). The New Obs : “Les Robins des Bois live up to their reputation: appalling on television, they are lamentable in the cinema” (Pascal Merigeau). Telerama : “Neither done nor to be done” (Aurelien Ferenczi). But the newspaper that chooses to take the film apart most methodically, oddly enough, is The Parisian. A big “NULL!” in the front page, then six articles on two pages with well-trimmed titles (“RRRrrrraté”, “Stop the not funny comedies”, “Chabat should have refused”). There is even an interview with Pierre-François Martin-Laval and Maurice Barthélemy. Which emphasizes: “The journalist Pierre Vavasseur had received us without specifying to us that he had not liked the film. It was really a dirty trick, we experienced it as an injustice. Nobody understood the relentlessness of the newspaper. »
It’s true, following all: we’re talking regarding a little comedy without racism, misogyny or conspiracy. A little comedy a bit useless, possibly. But The Parisian insists on the big budget of this production which, it is true, is not so “small”, and plays the vigilante, restorer of truth. Very influential at the time, the daily wanted to be close to the people, fighting once morest cool and trendy. The gargantuan promotional tour of Robins and Chabat, guests with great fanfare on all TV sets, has turned once morest them. “We had an immense comfort to make this film, but followingwards we wondered if it was really an advantage”, pursues Maurice Barthélemy. “We didn’t have a lot of ambition with the Robins, we were just kids happy to have the means to make a film with Chabat, a guy we admired. Our style was quite exclusive, it concerned a small caste. It was a kind of playground humor with a lot of codes, something impossible to understand in five minutes. And there, suddenly, we were expected by the whole of France, which wanted something in the spirit of Mission Cleopatra. »
Alain Chabat produced and directed the film. “We were just kids happy to have the means to make a film with Chabat, a guy we admired”, according to Maurice Barthélémy. At Wam’s
The film still attracts 1.7 million viewers. A figure that would envy today, and which limits the financial damage (it took 2 million to achieve a balanced budget). The damage is rather collateral. “We had committed RRRrrrr !!! », formula Maurice Barthélemy. “People from the cinema blocked their noses when they saw us. » Purgatory lasts two years, then everyone will find a way to bounce back. And if, these days, Maurice Barthélemy releases a photo-novel with Michel Lafon, it is not the sign of a failure: this Sexology is of a very tasty second degree.
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The absurdity of the Robins irrigated the following decades; it’s no coincidence that their comedy seems funnier today than it did back then. “It’s going to be all black” has risen to the rank of a heritage replica, it is eaten in movie theaters or just before (less cool) curfews. Without being as cult as The City of Fear or Visitors (and honestly, that’s normal), RRRrrrr !!! has passed through the generations. “My daughter’s friends, who are 18, watch him while smoking firecrackers”, assures Maurice Barthélemy.
p RRRrrrr !!! by Alain Chabat. On Prime Video and Disney+.
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