Jean-Paul Belmondo stars in this French adventure-lite, something about a military officer on leave who becomes involved in a kidnapping plot after a professor and his assistant are hypnotized and snatched by nefarious underworld types. The farcial yet dryly disengaged tone and the dewy photography has lead some to label this an avant-garde comedy. Actually, it's a rambling, repetitive genre-effort, very much of its time and curiously bland. There's a predictable romantic interlude involving Françoise Dorléac and a pretty but narcotizing Brazilian score from Georges Delerue, but the rest is slight stuff indeed. Very lax on the jokes and the sight-gags, though this may be wholly intentional. *1/2 from ****
Review of That Man from Rio
