Stream It Or Skip It: ‘French Girl’ on Amazon Prime Video, an Acceptably Middling Zach Braff Rom-Com

One rule of movie watching: Don’t judge a movie by its title – at least until you’ve watched it, anyway. And they don’t get much more generic than French Girl, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, despite having a real hot ‘n’ foamy direct-to-streaming title. It stars Zach Braff, playing a mostly likable goofus – right to type, for sure – caught in a love triangle of sorts with Evelyne Brochu (as the French Girl!) and Vanessa Hudgens (as the non-French girl!). That premise might be enough for a rom-com right? Sure, especially since our expectations were lowered by that title, which is as basic as buying bread at a bakery.

FRENCH GIRL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Gordon (Braff) can’t crack an egg without getting shells in the albumin, he burns the toast, he scorches a single slice of ham within an inch of its life and he doesn’t see the difference between mayonnaise and hollandaise. In short: He sucks major butt at making breakfast, but Sophie (Brochu) loves him anyway, because he tries, he tries so hard. And he’s charming in a fumblefart kind of way that fits the Zach Braff M.O., which here is like the Paul Rudd M.O. crossed with the old Woody Allen M.O. He bikes to work in a tweed jacket and garbs up like the Bard to teach a Shakespeare lesson to his eighth-grade English class. He’s that kind of guy. He wants to marry Sophie and fetches the family-heirloom wedding band from his father (William Fichtner), the wedding band that will inevitably be a key element of a bit of physical corpse comedy later in the movie. High-larious, I say. High-larious.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Sophie’s a person who cooks things really good, and has a shot at being executive chef at a fancy-ass restaurant in Canada, on the invite of internationally famous TV chef and restaurateur Ruby Collins (Hudgens). It requires canceling her and Gordon’s vacay and going to her hometown of Quebec City, where they’ll stay with her parents and siblings while she competes for the position. Being the highly loving and supportive type, Gordon says hey let’s go even though it’ll be awkward meeting your family for the first time. Of course, the first impression he makes on her sweet mother Ginette (Isabelle Vincent) and slightly gruff farmer-butcher father Alphonse (Luc Picard) is bad, because he accidentally washed down a quaalude with a few cups of wine during the flight, oh, oh, oh my aching sides.

Thankfully, Gordon’s got his feet back under him in time to meet Sophie’s slightly goofy brother (Antoine Olivier Pilon) who I like because he wears a Voivod heavy metal shirt – now that’s a first impression – and her grandma Mammie (Muriel Dutil), who has dementia and is prone to the occasional Wacky Senior Citizen Moment You Only See In Stupid Comedies. Gordon struggles to fit in among the manly men in Sophie’s family, since they like hockey and he likes figure skating, etc. etc. He’s a down-deep nice guy, sensitive and thoughtful, and kind of annoyingly endearingly neurotic, and you admire his effort. There’s legit love in his heart. Then he finds out that Ruby Collins is Sophie’s ex, and all his annoyingly endearingly neurotic neuroticisms start to boil over a little. I feel like I should’ve mentioned that development earlier, and coincidentally, so should’ve Sophie. Whoops. Is this situation starting to feel like we’re sitting on an atomic bomb, waiting for it to go off? Yes. It’s starting to feel like we’re sitting on an atomic bomb, waiting for it to go off.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Meet the Parents really needs to reacquire its premise – using legal muscle if necessary – and lock it up for a while. Three or four decades should suffice.

Performance Worth Watching: Brochu is a sincere and grounding force that French Girl needs. Really needs. Really really needs.

Memorable Dialogue: Gordon is a tad intimidated by Ruby Collins:

Sophie: I don’t care that she’s my ex. And you shouldn’t either.

Gordon: Well, it’s easier said than done when she looks like the future of the human race.

Sex and Skin: Eh, not really.

Our Take: Let’s just say French Girl isn’t going to break into the echelon of recent rom-coms that have been resuscitating the genre recently – it’s no Anyone But You, No Hard Feelings, or Whatever That Not-Quite May-December One with Anne Hathaway Was Called. Those films cling to formula but are wise enough not to indulge running jokes about milquetoasty lead characters being chased by overly aggressive swans, or to dip its toes into the nasty, nasty world of high-end chefs (if you want a smarter riff on that, go watch Always Be My Maybe, the underrated neo-standard-setter that mic-drops on ALL of these rom-romps). There’s a scene in French Girl that puts the movie in microcosm: Braff and Brochu on a date eating soft-serve vanilla ice cream. No sprinkles, no chocolate shell, no swirl. Plain vanilla. 

Which is to say, this mediocre material too often leaves Braff flailing like a dope while Hudgens struts and vamps and Brochu is left to hold it all together by playing a character who actually seems like a real person instead of something that’s so obviously Written For The Screen. I will say that Braff wisely corrects for the slightly desperate slapstick, giving Gordon an amiable likability that allows him to say the right thing at the right time instead of digging himself into a deeper hole like characters in far shittier comedies would do. Not that French Girl is particularly great, or even good – it’s a little sloppy, but watchable, the plot playing out in predictable fashion, from the love-triangle junk to the wacky-family junk. Between Braff’s visible efforts and Brochu’s invisible efforts, there are just enough decent moments here to warrant a recommendation. You might have to move the goalposts before pressing play, though – low expectations often yield positive results, y’know.

Our Call: This might be the lukewarmest STREAM IT I’ve ever penned.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.