FLY ME TO THE MOON (Un plan parfait) (2012)

Genre: Comedy/Romance
Director: Pascal Chaumeil
Cast: Diane Kruger, Dany Boon, Alice Pol, Robert Plagnol, Jonathan Cohen
RunTime: 1 hr 44 mins
Rating: PG13 (Brief Coarse Language)
Released By: InnoForm Media and Cathay-Keris Films
Official Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/imsoexcited/

Opening Day: 13 February 2014

Synopsis: Isabelle (Diane Kruger) is prepared to marry the man she has loved for the past ten years. However, she has to overcome a curse that her female family members have been battling for years — that all their first marriages end in divorce! Isabelle then comes up with the perfect plan. She will marry a stranger and get a quick divorce to avoid the curse and voilà! She’ll be happily married forever the second time. To achieve this, she has to marry the first unsuspecting idiot (Danny Boon) she can find... but then, even the most perfect of plans do not always work out the way one intends it to!

Movie Review:

Pascal Chaumeil hit box office gold with screenwriters Laurent Zeitoun and Yoann Gromb in ‘Heartbreaker’ back in 2010, the story of a brother and sister pair who run a professional business of breaking up couples by making their target realise the inadequacy of their existing relationship. And so it is not surprising that for their sophomore collaboration, the Gallic trio have once again concocted a high-concept rom-com worthy of a Hollywood remake, this time starring no less than one of their territory’s most well-known Hollywood exports by the name of Diane Kruger.

‘Fly Me to the Moon’ or ‘Un plan parfait’ in French is built on the premise of a family curse that the successful and pitch-perfect blond Isabelle (Kruger) has to confront when deciding to settle down with her longtime dentist partner Pierre (Robert Plagnol). Apparently, the women in her family have never gotten their first marriages to work out, so Isabelle thinks that hers to Pierre is doomed if it were to be her first. To attempt to break the curse, she comes up with a plan to marry and divorce a stranger all within a single day - just so that she can guarantee her marital bliss with Pierre.

That man she eventually settles on is Jean-Yves (Dany Boon), a goofy and somewhat eccentric travel guide whom she meets briefly on the plane to Copenhagen and whom she follows to Kenya on his location scouting for sites to be included in the French tourist guidebook, Le Routard. As such narrative conventions go, Isabelle and Jean-Yves will turn out mismatched in as many ways as possible at the start, before gradually and eventually falling in love with each other. And that’s exactly what happens, but not before Isabelle sets off on yet another trip to Moscow to get Jean-Yves to sign the divorce papers on the knot they tie at a tribal ceremony in the African continent.

Compared to ‘Heartbreaker’, Chaumeil’s latest rom-com feels a tad too generic and predictable. Indeed, the scenarios don’t go beyond the usual clichés, whether is it facing down a lion in the safari or some inappropriately raunchy talk at an official function in order that Isabelle embarrass Jean-Yves. What passes for humour instead comes off juvenile rather than inspired, even more so when Isabelle strains to wreck Jean-Yves’ life by destroying his prized antiques, pretending to talk to an imaginary friend and passing him hair removal cream instead of shampoo while he is in the shower after emptying the bottle out.

But if the shenanigans remain watchable, that is to Diane Kruger’s surprisingly spirited comedic turn. Though gifted with an ethereal beauty, Kruger has rarely been cast in rom-coms; and yet if her lively and amusing presence here is anything to go by, we wouldn’t bring if she took more frequent breaks from the more dramatic stuff like TV’s ‘The Bridge’. Boon is still the loveable buffoon from the French hit ‘Welcome to the Sticks’, and he and Kruger share an easy rapport that effuses an unexpected amount of humanity particularly towards the end of the film.

Even though it may not reach the same comedic heights as ‘Heartbreaker’, Chaumeil’s rom-com followup is still a pleasing enough diversion for anyone looking for some romantic escapism. The supporting leads, including a often hilarious Johnathan Cohen as Isabelle’s brother-in-law, are uniformly excellent, and Kruger and Boon nail the leads quite perfectly. And oh, if you’re wondering, the direct translation of the French title makes for ‘A Perfect Plan’, which probably sounded less appealing than pilfering the title of that classic Frank Sinatra song for its release in English-speaking territories. 

Movie Rating:

(Appealing performances from a surprisingly amusing and lively Diane Kruger and an always funny Dany Boon make for a pleasing rom-com outing just in time for V-Day)

Review by Gabriel Chong