Porn in the Hood (Les Kaira): Film Review

PARIS -- As boldly idiotic as its English-language title, the French banlieue comedy Porn in the Hood (Les Kaira) follows the lowly adventures of three down-on-their-luck thugs trying to break into the adult film industry and make a quick Euro. Adapting from his popular Canal + series, writer-director-star Franck Gastambide piles on the tasteless jokesmany of them involving untamed animals and/or women treated as suchbut rarely offers up the self-deprecating ghetto parody one could hope for.

Gaumonts mid-sized July 11^th release scored a sizeable 400K admissions in its first frame and is well on its way to becoming a sleeper summer hit, at least locally. Overseas action will be limited to Francophone territories, while other distributors will require a decent urban dictionary and perhaps a large bag of weed to translate the films unbeatable slang, delivered in rapid-fire bursts by its trio of man-boy hoodlums.

Indeed, the original title, Les Kaira, is French verlan (slang) for racaille (thug), and part of what made Gastambides show Kaira Shoppinga faux HSN set in a Parisian housing project and anchored by the three numbskullsso successful was its combination of DIY aesthetics, street attitudes and over-the-top salesmanship.

Here, the team has upped the ante with a decent budget (reported at 4 million), a handful of cameos and something thats meant to resemble a plot, but what they wind up with is a tedious exercise in outr humor that lacks the spontaneity, not to mention the brevity (the TV sketches normally clock in at under 3 minutes), of their YouTube-style phenomenon.

A speedy opening introduces us to lifelong friends Abdelkrim (Medi Sadoun), Mousten (Gastambide) and Momo (Jib Pochtier), who spend their days lounging around the latters apartment while insulting one another with fits ofhood lingo. Avid readers of porno mags, the three realize they can get rich quick by becoming pro studs themselves, and meet up with a sleazebag producer (Francois Damiens, in a fun bit role) who asks to see their demo reel by Monday morning.

Thus kicks off a long weekend of mayhem as the threesome tries to score any which way they can, although that story soon gives way to a more conventional tale of lost loves and local bullies. As for the jokes, Gastambide lays them on mighty thick with several over-the-top sequences (including one that combines taxidermy, cat allergies and female ejaculation), but everything is so in-your-face childish that he never quite hits a sustainable tone. When all else fails, Momo, a little person, becomes the go-to guy, and is literally thrown to the dogs in one scene that shows to what extent Porn in the Hood has run out of ideas by its midpoint.

Most disappointing is the films failure to tackle real questions about the notoriously nasty French suburbs, and although the characters are somewhat clever amalgams of banlieue types, their obsessions with porn and circus animals are closer to Jackass than to Dave Chappelle, turning the whole production into a high school-level prank.

Performances are exaggerated to the point that you can often see the actorsespecially Sadountrying way too hard to seem funny. Tech credits are flashy, with certain gags staged in fisheye widescreen by cinematographer Antoine Marteau (Twisted Souls) and a hip-hoppy soundtrack by a team that includes DJ Cut Killer (La Haine).

Production companies: Save Ferris, Mandarin Cinema, Gaumont
Cast: Medi Sadoun, Franck Gastambide, Jib Pocthier, Ramzy, Alice Belaidi
Director, screenwriter: Franck Gastambide, based on the series Kaira Shopping
Producers: Jean-Charles Felli, Christophe Tomas, Eric Altmayer, Nicolas Altmayer
Director of photography: Antoine Marteau
Production designer: Laurent Tesseyre
Costume designer: Sandra Berrebi
Editor: Veronique Parnet
Music: DJ Cut Killer, Herve Rakotofiringa, Eric Neveux
Sales: Gaumont
No rating, 96 minutes.