OSS 117: Lost in Rio

‘You’re old, pretentious, a misogynist, full of yourself, vain, borderline racist, a tacky dresser, childish and not funny,’ says agent 117’s new Mossad partner Dolorès Koulechov (Louise Monot) in co-writer-director Michel Hazanavicius’s sequel to his 2008 Bond spoof ‘Cairo: Nest of Spies’. ‘Shall I go on?’ Oh, yes! Please do. For if some of the zest, originality and fluency of 2006’s first parody of Jean Bruce’s plentiful and often lamely adapted spy novels is missing, the spot-on period design, puerile sight gags, laughable cinematic quotes – Hitchcock’s the main victim – and the enthusiasm of comedian Jean Dujardin’s playing of the supercilious Gaullist maladroit are all present and incorrect. The mission is to track down Rüdiger Vogler’s Nazis in Brazil – cue vertiginous fights on the arms of ‘Christ the Redeemer’ and set pieces more tasteless than ‘The Producers’ – but it’s the grooving to composer Ludovic Bource’s fab xylophone beats and Dujardin’s hyena laugh and heroic self-regard you’ll remember.