Three years after making a splash at the box office in the province, the popular Quebec comedy Liar is the subject of a French adaptation which hit theaters today in France. And the first reviews published in the French press are, to say the least, mixed.
• To read also: Liar adapted in France
“The truth is not funny,” headlined the daily Le Parisien on Tuesday with irony in its review of the French remake of Liar. The newspaper gave Olivier Baroux's film (Les Tuche) a low score of 1.5 out of 5, calling this summer comedy a "disappointment".
“Without lying, we would have liked to love Liar. But hell, the building collapses after a few minutes of film, getting bogged down in a scenario without tail or head ”, writes in particular the critic of Parisian.
Filmed in the summer of 2021 on the Côte d'Azur, Liar is an adaptation of the film of the same title by Émile Gaudreault in which Louis-José Houde slipped into the skin of a compulsive liar who saw all his lies come true. Released in July 2019, the Quebec comedy had been a huge success at the box office in the province, collecting more than $ 6 million at the box office. The French studio Gaumont had acquired the rights to adapt the feature film shortly after its launch in Quebec.
Summer comedy?
Announced for several months as "the comedy of the summer" in France, the French version of Liar stars comedian and actor Tarek Boudali in the central role of the film.
Like Le Parisien, the specialized magazine Les Fiches du Cinéma and the newspaper La Voix du Nord were not convinced by Olivier Baroux's Liar. On the other hand, the magazine Télé Loisirs was charmed by this “nice comedy adapted from a Quebec film”.
Although Liar enjoys wide circulation in France, several major newspapers such as Le Monde and Le Figaro had not yet published a review of the film as of Wednesday.
In Belgium and Switzerland, where the comedy also took to the stage on Wednesday, the first returns were not very favorable either.
“To tell the truth, it sucks”, could we read in the Swiss daily La Tribune de Genève, today. Same story on the side of the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, which evokes “a rather smooth and tasteless comedy, where the fantastic element remains completely untapped.”