Last week, 3.9 million people in France went to see Les Bronzés 3, Amis pour la Vie. This is the all time biggest opening of a movie in France ever. $29,065,803 in box office sales to date. Guess who is behind the distribution? Warner Bros! They must be happy. They even published a whole page of congratulations on page 24 of this week's Variety.

Let me try to give an explaination of this success because I know you must be interested in French Box Office news.

As you might have noticed, the title of the movie is Les Bronzés 3, that means there was Les Bronzés 1 and Les Bronzés 2. Oh by the way a "bronzés" is someone who is suntanned. Actually, I am wondering whether that trilogy is our Star Wars because the first opus was released in 1978 and the second one in 1979. And 27 years later, they released the third!

Here is a comment from IMDB on "French Fried Vacation", the first episode, which I found to be rather true:

This movie is one of the most important comedies in France. Almost everybody in France knows one or several sentences of it. If you want to tell a joke to a French guy, you could try to learn some of the principal sentences of the movie and you could be sure that he will laugh.

The first two films were so funny that people have seen them again and again and again on TV, on VHS and recently on DVD in a special colector's edition. A significant part of the public was not even born during the release of the first ones (like Star Wars).

I have seen the trailer, talked with friends back home, and I think Warner Bros may have just organized the biggest cinematic rip off ever. And it happenned back in my country, when I am not there to denounce it!