Inferior Sequel ‘OSS 117: Lost in Rio’ Mostly Falls Flat

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Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – It’s no mystery why the appeal of spy satires transcend the boundaries of time and culture. Clueless detectives with a bloated sense of self-importance are great comic punching bags. Everyone loves seeing a doofus get his head slammed in a door, whether that doofus be Inspector Clouseau or Lt. Frank Drebin or countless other law officers who could easily blend in with the Keystone Kops.

Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, the French spy better known as OSS 117, was created by author Jean Bruce as a straightforward hero. The character was featured in several ’60s thrillers that were meant to be serious competitors with the James Bond franchise. But in 2006, director Michel Hazanavicius decided to do for the outdated character what Austin Powers did for Bond. His picture, “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” was a gloriously nutty delight, with a smashing lead performance by Jean Dujardin, who looked like a cross between Justin Theroux and Pee-Wee Herman. His deadpan portrayal of monumental ignorance was so spot-on that it sparked the possibility of a lucrative franchise.

OSS 117: Lost in Rio
Photo credit: Music Box Films

Unfortunately, Hazanavicius and Dujardin’s follow-up, “OSS 117: Lost in Rio,” is only mildly funny at best. It’s lacks the tireless invention of its predecessor, and settles into increasingly tedious variations on its one-joke premise. OSS 117’s sexism, racism and homophobia are meant to be hilariously archaic, as if he’s channeling the soul of Archie Bunker. Though the humor is more verbal than physical, it still amounts to a lot of empty posturing. Imagine if Artie Kendall, the racist ghost crooner that materialized on Conan O’Brien’s late show, was granted a feature-length star vehicle. The result would more or less be this movie.

Whereas “Cairo” was set in 1955, and gleefully satirized espionage thrillers of the period, “Rio” is set in 1967, though the ever-beaming agent’s body and brain has failed to mature. We’ve all seen satires of this swinging decade before, and Hazanavicius treads no new territory. What’s worse is that he’s content in merely quoting the period stylistically, rather than building actual gags. In one scene, a series of split screens display the phone correspondence between an increasing number of characters until they all hang up. Cut to next scene. Where’s the humor in that? It’s sort of like how “SNL” has become content in merely imitating famous celebrities instead of milking them for laughs. When OSS 117 attempts to cook a crocodile, the initially amusing sight gag fatally overstays its welcome. This sharply contrasts with “Cairo”’s chicken-hurling sequence, which was so outrageously funny that even PETA members wouldn’t be able to resist it.

OSS 117: Lost in Rio
Photo credit: Music Box Films

The script by Hazanavicius and Jean-François Halin comes up with several promising set-pieces that never pay off. At one point, OSS 117 is dressed as Robin Hood (the Errol Flynn version) in a ballroom full of Nazis dancing to a live German version of “The Girl from Ipanema.” The scene is practically bursting at the seams with potential, and yet it merely drifts to the next wasted set-piece. The plot is trivial, as expected, though it lacks the biting wit of its predecessor. When OSS 117 discovers that the colonel of the Israeli army is a woman, his sexist tendencies kick into overdrive. Yet Dujardin’s scenes with assigned love interest Louise Monot are all the more awkward since their chemistry is nonexistent. Though scattered chuckles and a couple disarming guffaws are elicited during the picture, they are separated by a great deal of dead air.

There are few things more depressing than a comedy that fails to make its audience laugh, since laughter has become a particularly priceless commodity these days. I’m still holding out hope that OSS 117 will regain his mojo and deliver the goods again. Whether he actually will is hard to determine. What was once effortless and charming has already become forced and stale. “OSS 117: Lost in Rio” is as inferior a sequel as “Austin Powers and the Spy Who Shagged Me.” These films have very little in common, apart from the overwhelming feeling of having been there, shagged that.

By MATT FAGERHOLM Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com matt@hollywoodchicago.com