By Chris Tookey
Last updated at 1:22 AM on 15th April 2011
Verdict: A long, hard slog
Rating: 
Little White Lies sets out to be a Gallic Big Chill and ends up like a less comedic Grown Ups.
It’s about shallow, materialistic Parisians going on holiday while one of their number, a hedonistic party animal (Jean Dujardin), lies in hospital after a motor accident.
Mostly they seem obsessed not with their friend, but with their love lives.
Self-indulgent slog: The usually outstanding Marion Cotillard fails to lift this dreary film
Wealthy heterosexual restaurateur Max (Francois Cluzet) is upset that his best male friend (Benoit Magimel) is in love with him.
Ludo’s ex-girlfriend (Marion Cotillard) is struggling with commitment issues over her latest one-night stand. Two other men mope about the women who have dumped them.
There are more crude sexual references than you’d expect in an otherwise sophisticated French comedy.
The unhelpful American influence extends to the soundtrack, which features incongruous music by the Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and an excruciatingly mistimed version of My Way.
Guillaume Canet’s direction is self-indulgently flaccid, and his screenplay unstructured. It’s way too long at 154 minutes, but the biggest problem is the lack of momentum and character development.
The film drags its way to a tragic ending that allows the group’s elder statesman, an oyster farmer (played by real-life oyster farmer Joel Dupuch) to deliver a few home truths about showing off, callousness and bourgeois hypocrisy, before the friends come together in a feelgood moment of lachrymose companionship.
I wish I could say I felt enlightened and enriched. Mostly, it made me feel in need of a good, long holiday.
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