Morons are always good material for a film, comical at first sight. Here, they're set in a seemingly unlikely environment. The USA, with the midwest, then California. The film tackles some fashionable themes, such as gay marriage. But it also touches on the universal themes of the Tuche franchise: family feeling and solidarity, from parents to children, to elders (with the grandmother character here); there's also the open-mindedness of the family unit. The film also indulges in some pastiches, in this case on plastic surgery.

The Tuches have a lot of sympathy. They love Little House on the Prairie. They're open-minded. And the film contains a number of gems: Claire Nadeau's interventions, Pierre Lottin's dialogues, and of course Jean-Paul Rouve and Isabelle Nanty who are at their best, with the particular psychology of the father of the family. These Tuches are a delicious antidote to a certain self-righteousness.

There's also their dispute with the Californian family, which is dealt with in an interesting way, but which could have been more fully developed; it can't work for the son because it violates the Tuche family rules. Note that the film shows that money has qualities and can put anyone in power, and as if having money gave talent... We leave it to you to imagine to whom this might apply.

It has to be said that the writing work is significant and successful, whether on the main dramatic film, or within each scene. Five scriptwriters are credited, and a great deal of work went into devising the comic elements of each sequence.

To start with a lousy pun, the first opus didn't really 'Tuche' me. It had a few funny, smile-inducing or heart-warming moments praising such values as family and money-can't-buy-you-know-what, but I was disappointed by the overall dryness of gags, especially given the promising material. Now, I'm thinking, having a 'hillbilly' family confronted to rich people wasn't exactly the most fertile concept comedy-wise. Still, the film was a commercial success but from the way it ended, there was nothing justifying a sequel… except a simple but great idea.

So, five years later, the Tuches visit America, it's so simple I wonder why this didn't make the first film. The North is impregnated with American pop-culture more than any French region, the father (Jean-Paul Rouve) is a French version of Homer Simpson (thinner with more hair), the mother is a plumper version of Marge, and in the grandpa role, you have Claire Nadeau as the scene-stealing grandmother who drank one shot too many and talks in such a way she needs subtitles, and to complete the gallery, the young dim-witted brother loves big cars, the sister idolizes big-rack... celebrities, and the precocious kid (remember, Donald) who's grown up since the last five years, study in a prestigious campus in America.

Donald meets a cute student whose parents are rooted in the WASP establishment, so he has no other choices than lying about his background, Jeff Tuche becomes a plastic surgeon, Cathy a 2010's version of Jackie Kennedy (while she's closer to Jackie Sardou, a reference only French readers will get, sorry). And it doesn't take long before the Tuches decide to celebrate Donald's 16th birthday in America and then begins a comedy of opposition in the same vein than "Just Visiting" or "The Birdcage" as there's nothing funnier than watching people failing to pretend, but trying hard enough to never lose the benefit of the doubt, it's like a tightrope walking game where you laugh at the situation, the risks, the consequences and it's a win-win guarantee for laughs.

And there's a sequence of thirty minutes at least in the middle of the film where I believed this was one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time, and it reaches a pinnacle during a hilarious family dinner where Jeff is asked to say the graces, until the hilarious failure of the sunroof that brought tears to my eyes. At that moment, I was hoping the film would keep on the same track so I won't have to say a 'but'.

But…

… the film gets back to its old demons near the end, where so many arcs are not closed you wonder why they started in the first place. The sister leaves her cheating soccer-player of a boyfriend but the man is in love, and wants to win back her love, he's mistaken for a terrorist, hitchhikes only to bump on a truck probably going to a KKK convention and then… nothing. She's conned by a French crook who takes hot pictures of her body and sends her to crappy auditions, but the guy never gets any comeuppance. The worst is still Donald, who finally found the guts to tell his girlfriend's father where he comes from, and leaves without anything being left of his relationship. Isn't he in love anymore? Wasn't that girlfriend impressed by his move? Was she just a sort of plot-filler with a few lines and smiles thrown here and there?

The film spent too much time on a marriage crisis subplot. Jeff buys a hospital clinic, becomes a workaholic surgeon (he's just 'managing' the place like when he was a soccer coach), and of course, Cathy feels abandoned, just like the first film, and she becomes a good friend to a meek Canadian neighbor, also 'abused' by his wife. And together, they learn country music and together, they decide to participate in a dance contest in Vegas. Seriously, couldn't they come out with a more exciting idea? There was no believable chemistry between Cathy and her 'lover', and you can't get from a hilarious campfire scene in an Indian reserve to a recycled sitcom story-line. Even Vegas was so frustratingly unexploited except for the hilarious moment when the Amish carriage takes them after their car broke down, that was a little glimpse of originality before it all fell down.

I know it's supposed to be a comedy with a heart, and I'm not saying it fails on that department, but when you don't embarrass to conclude many subplots involving the other family members, you don't need to take so dramatically the other parts? So they go to Vegas, the dance contest is over, the father makes a speech and he gets his love back. But you know in movies in Vegas, you must get two things: casinos and weddings, well, forget about the casinos, there had to be the wedding between the brother and the gardener.

Yes, we know the brother is gay and I expected something about that, but the wedding felt not just gratuitous but ludicrous in the way it assumed that just because he was gay, he would marry the first guy he fell in love in America, it wouldn't have made sense even for a straight couple, unless you clearly show an intense and passionate love from the start, not just a few hugs and a night of moon-contemplation. Make the identity of the husband a gag, something touching and hilarious, it's just as if they were in a rush to conclude the film, and that's how it felt. There was basically no third act.

I get why I didn't like the first, it felt like the overlong set-up of a great comedy, that is "The Tuches 2", at least for two thirds of it. A pity because it came close to being one of the funniest French comedies of recent time.