Les Rois du sport (1937)
Directed by Pierre Colombier

Film Review

Looking like a zany compendium of excerpts yanked from a series of Buster Keaton silent shorts, Les Rois du sport offers a few moments of hilarity but suffers from an almost total absence of plot and a wearying lack of imagination on the writing and directing fronts.  As it features the combined efforts of no less than three monstres sacrés of 1930s French cinema - namely Raimu, Fernandel and Jules Berry - it is hard to see why the film fails to take off.  Individually, the three actors give great value (even if they are cast in their habitual roles), but when they appear together on screen (which is most of the time) they are more likely to cancel one another out than complement each other.  Julien Carette is even more ill-served by this film - he is completely wasted in an inconsequential supporting role.  Apart from the amusement value that Fernandel offers when he attempts to play the adept sportsman (which he does far less humorously than Keaton), Les Rois du sport offers very little other than mild tedium.  Pierre Colombier directed Fernandel and Raimu (separately) in a number of other lowbrow comedies of this type, the most enjoyable being L'École des cocottes (1935) and Ignace (1937).

Film Synopsis

Jules and Fernand, two waiters in a Marseilles café, are both keen sports enthusiasts.  They enter the annual waiters' race, which Jules wins.  With the prize money, Jules places a bet on a football match with a boxing manager, Burette.  When Jules wins the bet, Burette disappears, and Jules follows him to Paris to try to recuperate his winnings.  Fernand later arrives in Paris but is mistaken for Burette's star boxer, who is about to contest a well-publicised match...