Today's Review: Do Not Disturb

 

Here's another review I wrote for MovieScene this week:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/148416/do_not_disturb_-_recensie

I wanted to like this movie, but it didn't make it easy for me to do so. It wasn't until the end that I found it to be truly deserving of the genre description 'comedy', by which time it was kinda too late anyway. A French remake of an American movie is also kinda odd: it's usually the other way. Currently, Intouchables and Das Leben der Anderen are undergoing such treatment, only because Americans can't be bothered to read subtitles. It seems the same is true for the French. Maybe the original movie, Humpday, simply didn't get a French dubbed release. It was a small indie movie after all, so it's not inconceivable. But this remake truly proves that "us" Europeans are no better than those Yanks when it comes to remaking movies for our own convenience. We'd do well to remember that every time we complain about the Americans running off with yet another one of "our" Euro-classics. And hey, sometimes those do work! Just look at Let Me In and The Girl with the Dargon Tattoo, good remakes both, though like any remake, not really needed in the overall scheme of things, especially if you're willing to sit through a language you're unfamiliar with. You could call Do Not Disturb a good remake, since it follows the original Humpday plot line so closely. However, in that case you ought to say Humpday just isn't a terrific movie...