SnoopyStyle
Alex (Romain Duris) runs a specialty service to entice women into breaking up with their mates. Alex, his sister Mélanie (Julie Ferrier) and her husband Marc (François Damiens) are hired by friends and families of these women. The trio has a few rules. The most important one is that the women are unhappy in their relationship and Alex vows never to fall for any of the women. A gangster hires them to break up his daughter Juliette (Vanessa Paradis) and Englishman Jonathan (Andrew Lincoln) before their marriage in 10 days. The problem is that the couple seems perfect together but Alex desperately needs the money.Apparently, Romain Duris is a french movie star. I wouldn't know. He comes off as yet another scruffy dirty Frenchman with pretensions of being a sex symbol. The problem is that he's suppose to be dripping in charm and I don't see it. The language barrier could also have something to do with it. I've never had much luck with French comedies. The heart of what the group does is actually pretty sleazy. I don't mind it but the movie insists on coating it with a superficial happy good intention. The whole thing is manufactured awkwardness and it rubs me the wrong way. Vanessa Paradis has supermodel looks and is acting down to that supermodel level. The love of Dirty Dancing is endearing and it has some cute moments. Overall, I don't care about these characters.
MartinHafer
"Heartbreaker" is worth seeing. However, it's also very frustrating to watch because the film starts off wonderfully and through the course of the film it just sort of fizzles. It's a real shame as the first 10 minutes is magical!The film starts with a man and woman on vacation in Egypt. However, they don't seem very compatible and soon she is being wooed by a very nice stranger. Then you learn that the stranger is not there by accident. He and his partners make up a strange service--one that helps break up toxic relationships. In other words, parents or friends who KNOW you are in a bad relationship can pay these schemers to destroy the couple. However, these folks are NOT totally mercenary. They won't break up genuinely happy and healthy couples nor will they break folks up for ridiculous reasons like race. So, the viewer actually LIKES the work these people do.Soon after this wonderful intro, a group of mob types announce that they service is inexplicably heavily in debt--and they must produce the money fast or else. So, they take a job from a nasty guy--and their commitment to their ethics is challenged. After all, the couple seem very happy, well-matched and decent. Can the breakup artist STILL do his job when given this sort of situation?Had the film been more episodic like the beginning and showed funny scenarios of breakups, it might have worked much better for me. Having the focus ONLY on this one couple with few problems was very problematic--as it became a bit dull AND the finale made zero sense at all. Nor did the friend that the lady had--as they seemed way too different in values and attitude to make it believable that they'd ever be friends. It's a shame, as the film did start off well and it does have some really nice moments scattered through the picture--but it just tried my attention span as it progressed and the film was a mild misfire.
rainey-3
Throwing a maimed dove down a sand dune, then announcing "It won't fly", was not funny. Concussing a woman into unconsciousness multiple times with a metal pot, no matter how disgustingly she was behaving, was not funny. The premise? A 3-person "team" of French people make their money by breaking up the marriages of women too stupid to know they are actually unhappy. One of the team is a hulking, creepy, too- loud peeping-tom half-wit slob (the main character should have broken up HIS marriage) braying into the camera every other scene-- what in heaven's name are people finding entertaining about this dud?? The movie features a two very underweight (in more ways than one) French people who have absolutely no chemistry. I'd rather watch water boil. These two leads are incredibly, painfully, bony! When they embraced, they must have rattled. And the teeth! Good lord, the teeth. Though it was nice to see the ritzy interiors of the tony Monte Carlo hotels, but baby, that was it. Other than a few sunsets over the Riviera, this movie was complete waste of time. Silly, if not stupid. If only IMDb allowed us to award negative-stars. That's the only way this movie would see 10 of anything.
lewiskendell
"Women in couples come in three categories: happy, knowingly unhappy, and unhappy without admitting it."Heartbreaker is a breezy French romantic comedy about a suave man travels about, being paid by wealthy people to break up relationships or engagements between women and the men that they don't love or who are undeserving. He's hired by parents, siblings, and friends to keep the women from making mistakes. With the help of his sister, brother-in-law, and the information they gather about their marks, they efficiently make the women fall for Alex, and in the process, make them realize that they don't love their partner. They only intervene if they see that the woman is truly unhappy, and they never act on the basis of race or nationality. Alex doesn't sleep with the women, it's all strictly business. That is (there's always a catch) he's hired to thwart an upcoming marriage that seems perfect from the outside, and meets a woman who becomes more than just another job.There's nothing particularly new or brilliant about Heartbreakers, but it's pleasant enough. It's amusing at times (mostly thanks to the comic relief of the sister and brother-in-law characters), and whoever wrote the script has a definite love for Dirty Dancing. The movie is referenced almost constantly, and there's even a spot-on recreation of a dance scene, near the end. So if you're a big fan of Dirty Dancing, the novelty of that should be a point in Heartbreaker's favor.Overall, this was an okay movie. There are much worse movies of the type, that's for sure.
AD
