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Stupid on all levels. |
| All-Time High, as translated from the French title Nouveaux Riches, is an action comedy about small-time scam artists. The movie is just as stupid as the main characters are. Youssef (Nassim Lyes) is a fast-talking scoundrel; he’s at a club trying to hit on a girl by talking himself up, and when she points out that he’s tried to hit on her in the past and doesn’t remember, he doesn’t care and keeps trying. | 2023 Directed by: Julien Hollande Screenplay by: Julien Hollande Starring: Nassim Lyes, Zoé Marchal | |
| The next day he’s trying to pull off an unexplained scam which involves other people buying designer hand bags and he sells them. The movie doesn’t explain at all how that works, probably because it doesn’t. Youssef also has a girlfriend, who he lies to non-stop, and when she asks him to stop lying, he keeps lying, but for some reason she believes him. Con artists, at least in better movies, get away with it because they’re charming; they can get people to believe their lies because they want to. None of that works here because his lies are stupid. That first portion of the movie is supposed to be the comedy, but it’s hard to find any laughs in it. Next, Youssef gets himself into a shady poker game, where he’s losing but tries to convince a group of bad guys to give him a loan. Sure enough, they do, and he keeps losing, to a girl named Stephanie (Zoé Marchal). He hates losing to a girl so a fight breaks out. This is the action portion of the movie. Random fighting sequences that stretch out for way too long that are completely unrealistic and exactly as stupid as you would expect given how stupid the main characters are. It's an action-comedy but the action and comedy are completely separated, there’s no cohesion in the movie which makes it drag a lot. Back to comedy, Youssef and Steph and thrown back together and he discovers that she thinks she’s an almost millionaire after investing in crypto. She’s obviously wrong, but it’s not clear if believes her own lies or not, regardless, Youssef does. The stupidity just keeps getting higher and higher completely losing the comedy. The action sequences aren’t even any fun unlike The Retirement Plan which can take a stupid plot and turn it into an entertaining movie. This just takes stupid characters, puts them in a stupid story, and nobody should be surprised when in the end result is a stupid movie. | ||