Light and very slight, French-Algerian director Merzak Allouache's follow-up to 1994's BAB EL OUED CITY is a cheerful but only intermittently engaging look at the lives of Algerian-born Parisians. Alilo (Gad Elmaleh) is in "the bizness" -- that is, the
business of traveling to Paris and smuggling out salable goods unavailable in his native Algiers. On this trip, however, he loses the address of his latest pick-up. So he spends five days touring the new, multi-culti Paris with his cousin Mok (Mess Hattou), an aspiring rap singer who's hit upon
the novel idea of setting La Fontaine's animal poems to a funky beat. Allouche's film is fluffy stuff even by the standards ...
Released:
1996
Rated:
NR
Length:
103 mins