The first part deftly blends comedy with drama;director/actor Attal uses a classic comic situation for something it was not meant for: the (very big) dog settles down in a bourgeois house and the family cannot get rid of this burdensome animal ; but dad ,a writer who has been suffering from cramp for years , is fed up with his depressed wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and his restless offspring : three boys and a girl ;the dog becomes his true mate ,he calls him "Stupid" (in the title ,it's really a proper noun).There's a lot of humor ,as this dog has a tendency to sexually assault the male persons;although Attal uses and abuses the voice over to tell us how he feels nostagic for his days in Rome ,where he was able to let his inspiration flow, but it was before he was a family man,the movie survives the intellectual intentions .
With a few exceptions,the second part is preachy,edifying ,sophomoric and dull ,as tedious as Miss Gainsbourg's lecture on Musset' "Lorenzaccio" ; the story becomes predictable , implausible (the essays ), and " you -shall- be- a- man ,my son " in the grand tradition of Kipling; all the lines between the born again writer and his editor have been heard at least a hundred times or more by the average viewer: it's the last line , thanks one more time to this good old dog ,which saves it from the pure cliché .It's also the presence of the pet which saves the improbable scene between the professor and the writer .The story drags on and on , with a little help from the music ,a lovely variation on Lennon/McCartney's "and I love her"in the last sequences,nicely filmed .
Dedicated to director Claude Berri.
10 out of 10 found this helpful