Nicholas on Holiday

The opening credits of this luscious French film evoke the giddiness of a family comedy straight out of 1964. In fact, the story is set in that time of larger-than-life Italian movie producers, family vacations to resorts with complaining grandmas in tow, and expected civility at crowded strips of relaxing beaches. Into this Mad Men-era world of the French middle class comes young Nicholas (Mathéo Boissellier), his frustrated mother (Valérie Lemercier), hapless father (Kad Merad), and chronically dissatisfied grandmother (Dominique Lavanant), all taking a summertime holiday. The ocean beckons, food is plentiful, an unexpected reunion occurs with an old schoolmate, and a crew of rapscallion boys get up to hijinks with Nicholas. What could go wrong? Plenty, it turns out in this divertingly over-the-top farce. Mother is lured into temporary celebrity by a hard-sell producer. Father has to urgently retrieve a hastily-written letter to his boss from an unbreakable post box. Nicholas’s parents are assumed to be broke. A hotel guest is showered with sewage. And Nicholas is terrified of a little girl who resembles Wednesday Addams. Sometimes very funny and always pleasurable, Nicholas on Holiday is a film with loads of easygoing, sunny charm. Recommended. (T. Keogh)