Every week, Netflix reveals its Top 10 lists, ranking its most-viewed movies and TV shows. Though some of these top titles are expected, others can surprise. Here’s where we try to make sense of those seemingly random hits.
France has a reputation for being sexually liberal, and a recent French film that dropped on the streamer, Honeymoon Crasher, is mining that reputation for laughs in a way that is wildly entertaining. It made me concerned that I shouldn’t be laughing as much as I did on a couple of occasions during my viewing. (I should note that I watched the film in French with subtitles, which is a better experience than watching the dubbed version.)
Honeymoon Crasher, which has been at No. 1 on Netflix’s non-English movies Top 10 list for weeks, stars Michèle Laroque as Lily, a middle-aged woman whose son Lucas (Julien Frison) was left at the altar by his fiancée, Elodie. In the aftermath, Lucas is not just depressed that he was abandoned by the woman that he loves, but he also spent a ton of money on the perfect honeymoon, and the trip is going to go to waste if he doesn’t go. And so, out of pity for his mother (she and Lucas’ father are married but never had the chance to take a honeymoon of their own), and out of a desire to make his ex jealous on socials by pretending he’s bringing a new girlfriend who doesn’t exist, he and his mom head to Mauritius for a tropical getaway.
It sounds innocent enough so far, just a mom and her adult son on a trip together. Still, the jokes start pouring in when Lily realizes that the staff and other guests think that she and Lucas are newlyweds and are impressed by their progressive May-December romance. Their suite is upgraded by the hotel manager, who sees Lily as an aspirational figure, and guests are fascinated by how Lily and Lucas met. “She was there when I was born,” Lucas tells another couple in one of the film’s funnier sequences. “She was the first person to hold me… We’ve been together ever since.” In this case, Lucas is intentionally trying to creep his own mother out as payback for taking the ruse too far, and it’s a clever way of making a joke while acknowledging how gross it all sounds.
In the tradition of other R-rated comedies, bodily humor and narcotics references also abound. There is a sequence exclusively devoted to Lucas trying to prevent himself from unleashing uncontrollable diarrhea all over a woman he has a crush on as they flirt on the beach. Soon after that, Lucas and Lily get thrown in jail for illegally smoking pot.
What’s interesting to me as a movie watcher (and for the record, my job requires me to watch more Hallmark and Lifetime movies than your average person probably does) is how Honeymoon Crasher contrasts with the movie that currently sits atop Netflix’s English movie Top 10, La Dolce Villa. A cozy romance set in Italy starring Scott Foley that goes down smooth and exists in a universe where the term MILF could not possibly exist. La Dolce Villa and other popular romances like Hot Frosty and Love, Guaranteed are essentially Netflix’s version of Hallmark films: formulaic and gentle — and wildly popular. To see the two films juxtaposed in the top positions of the Netflix movie charts almost feels like a social commentary about what American vs. French audiences are comfortable with (until you remember that The White Lotus season 3 currently features a sibling storyline that just happens to be more subtle in its creepiness).
Though Honeymoon Crasher is filled with dark, risque humor, ultimately it’s about a mother and son whose tempestuous relationship is tested and ultimately improved after all the farce (and farts?) is stripped away. Ironically, on paper, it’s not all that different from La Dolce Villa, which also features a parent and adult child traveling the world and gaining insight into each other. Clearly both films’ formulas are successful on the platform, but if you’ve already watched La Dolce Villa and want something with more edge, try the Oedipal arrangement in Honeymoon Crasher.
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