Cocorico: what is the big Christian Clavier/Didier Bourdon match worth? (critical)

This comedy around DNA tests brings together the two juggernauts of French mainstream comedy. Not enough to fill the gaps in an uninspired scenario.

“ You don’t choose your ancestors! », we read on the poster of cock-a-doodle Doo, the concept of which could be summed up in this single sentence. The story of Alice and François (Chloé Coulloud and Julien Pestel), future newlyweds who bring their parents together to tell them the good news, and take the opportunity to offer them DNA tests in order to discover their origins. Obviously, the results are not what they expected…

In a slightly fairer parallel world, cock-a-doodle Doo would have remained calmly in its status as a TV film and would not have forced anyone to pay a cinema ticket to discover its number 1 appeal product: the meeting of two MVPs of mainstream French comedy, Didier Bourdon and Christian Keyboard. A all star game quite delightful when everyone deploys their devastating comic timing during the initial meeting, but which suddenly turns empty when the scenario condemns them to take on ad nauseam roles that are caricatures of themselves (the bad-tempered conservative aristo for Clavier; the middle-class sixty-year-old for Bourdon).

We expected a potential variation on First namei.e. a closed session where the masks fall while the barbs fly, except that Julien Hervé, director of Doudou in 2017 and co-writer of Tuche, does not have the nastiness of Alexandre De La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte. We then have to endure weak and uninspired taunts about the Germans (who knows why, the character of Bourdon hates the inhabitants from across the Rhine) or the Portuguese (the scene with the plumber, a great moment in cinema).

Completely absurd in its second part where Sylvie Testud considers herself an heir to the royal family because she has English blood, cock-a-doodle Doo is then content to spout clichés every kilometer (mostly about our European neighbors) and hackneyed comedy situations. And even in full possession of their means, Christian Clavier and Didier Bourdon cannot do much to redress the situation.

Cocorico, by Julien Hervé, with Didier Bourdon, Christian Clavier, Sylvie Testud… Currently in cinemas.