Because he wanted to defend a little boy who was stealing a pair of boots in the clothes shop where he used to work, Gérard Barbier (Coluche) is fired from his job. Because he's only graduated from high school, he decides to become a teacher. Installed in a school, he carries out more or less of his obligations with a little help from his workmates. But one day, nearly all of them fall sick. Who will replace them?
When the movie was launched in 1981, Berri claimed he didn't intend to make a negative movie on school but to show the frontier between freedom and discipline. We must recognize it: his movie doesn't reach his goal and he barely enriches his words. For lacking of having made a brilliant movie, Berri's movie remains a nice movie, deprived of vulgarity and enjoys of Coluche's performance either right, either funny. Even if it introduces, convenient situations (like the inspector's arrival in the classroom) as well as the characters (the depressive Mme Lajoie performed by Josiane Balasko), the comic side of the movie is gentle and honest. You must see Coluche teaching to pupils when you know that he hasn't got any experience at all in education.
However, the movie doesn't succeed in hiding a few weaknesses: the screenplay doesn't avoid a few clichés linked to school: the revolting food in the canteen, some of Coluche's pupils are psychological problem children (one of them has got divorced parents). At last, the music just serves as a decorative role to the movie. You could say the same thing to the long and endless wedding sequence at the end of the movie.
All in all, an entertaining movie but without any great originality.
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