Little Indian, Big City
Stephen, an international trader, tracks down his ex-wife Patricia in some Amazonian backwater. He needs her consent to a divorce so that he can marry Charlotte. Unfortunately, he discovers a son he didn’t know he had – Mimi-Siku. The young jungle boy yearns to see Paris so Stephen reluctantly agrees to take him back home with him for a few days. How will Mimi-Siku react to life in the great metropolis?
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- Cast：
- Thierry Lhermitte , Patrick Timsit , Ludwig Briand , Miou-Miou , Arielle Dombasle , Sonia Vollereaux , Jackie Berroyer
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Reviews
I love this movie so much
This is How Movies Should Be Made
Horrible, fascist and poorly acted
Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible
When it was released in the United States, "Little Indian, Big City" received a lot of brutal reviews; critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, among others, declared it as one of the worse movies they had ever seen. Is the movie really one of the worst ever made? No - it isn't aggressive in its badness as the worst movies out there. But all the same, it's still a pretty bad movie. It's biggest problem is that it's not the least bit funny, with juvenile gags that even kids won't laugh at. But it's also incompetent in its execution, with scenes that seem to be missing or key footage in scenes that are there missing. It doesn't help that the English dubbing is badly done, making the characters speak in awkward English in an attempt to match the lip movements. The American remake of this movie ("Jungle 2 Jungle") is an improvement - but not by much.
Oddly, this movie made me remember of Poiré's movie "the visitors". It's nearly the same topic and the story is told in a comedy style: the presence of a character (here, it happens to be a young Indian) in an unknown universe for him. Obviously, he'll come to turn upside down the living conditions of a few people (like Thierry Lhermitte). Otherwise, it's just a nice but flat comedy. Anyway the result was effective because success was on appointment. And Hervé Palud's movie had the merit of having interested the USA because three years later, an American remake was launched. When you think about French comic movies that are rather badly thought of, it's nearly an achievement.
Gee, I guess I should be embarrassed, but I liked this movie. It's sort of an ultra-lightweight comic version of François Truffaut's "Wild Child"...the adults are appropriately silly, the boy is a charmer, the girl is cute, the climb of the Eiffel Tower is pretty spectacular and the movie ends well for everyone. The Russian bad-guys and some of the treatment of animals (birds!) make the movie a little heavy for young kids, but overall the film is far more effective than the Disney remake, where the boy is too old and the adults don't really make much sense, even for a comedy.
What is up with this movie? It's awful. Why of all the foreign language films, did THIS one get a major U.S. release? Why did they remake it (Jungle 2 Jungle)? Did they think that making it in english would make it better? Roger Ebert gave it his rare Zero Stars, and, I can assure you, it deserves every star it didn't get. 1/10
