Banzaï (1983)
Directed by Claude Zidi

Film Review

One of the weaker films which Coluche made in his brief but often dazzling film career, Banzai has a few exceptionally funny visual jokes but is overall a pretty mediocre offering.  The film's main plot is too weak to sustain the narrative much beyond the film's mid-point, by which time decent laughs have become somewhat few and far between.  It is however worth watching the film for the madcap comic stunts in the film's first half and, best of all, the notorious “elephant man” sequence.

Film Synopsis

Michel Bernardin is an employee of Planète Assistance, a travel insurance company which prides itself on coming to the aid of anyone wherever they may be in the world.  Ironically, Michel hates travelling, especially by air as he has a morbid fear of flying.  Fortunately, his work seldom takes him out of his cosy Parisian office.  Odd then that he should be engaged to someone, Isabelle, who is presently employed as an air hostess.  Michel's worst nightmare becomes a reality when he gets on the wrong side of his boss and ends up having to travel all over the world to help customers in distress.  Isabelle has promised to give up her job after she marries Michel, but she must continue as an air hostess until she has completed the term of her contract.

The couple soon find they are having to carry on an increasingly fraught charade (helped by their friends) as they try to hide from each other how they spend their days.  After jetting off to Tunis to rescue the son of a friend of his, Michel soon finds himself en route to the most hazardous district of New York.  Then he's off to Africa, where he falls foul of a plot by a group of revolutionaries to rescue their leader.  Before he knows it, Michel is in Hong Kong, where is is mistaken for a drugs trafficker.  As luck would have it, Isabelle is also in Hong Kong, but on the couple's return to France disaster strikes yet again...