Director: Lorraine Levy, 15, 98min

Stars: Vincent Lindon, Pascal Elbé, Virginie Ledoyen

On selected release

This situation comedy, a French film set in London’s supposedly famous French expat community of “Frog Alley”, takes so long to set up its Odd Couple-like premise that its smug characters take forever to get round to the business of being amusing or romantic – and are terribly unengaging when they take a stab at it.

The hangdog vertigo sufferer Mathias (Vincent Lindon) moves to London to run a bookshop and be near an ex-wife who promptly departs for Paris, leaving him with their adorable moppet daughter. Rudderless, Mathias persuades his prissy, anally retentive architect best friend Antoine (Pascal Elbé), also a divorced dad, to knock down the partition wall between their living rooms so that they can form one big, noisy, obnoxiously French family complete with lengthy food preparation scenes, hissy fits, lists of broken rules and potential and/or actual love interests (notably Ledoyen) who threaten everyone’s equilibrium.

The director Levy, adapting a novel by her brother Marc, presents postcard views of a London without English speakers, and fails to get the expected laughs out of everyone’s absurd behaviour.

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010