Girl on a Bicycle (2012)

I so rarely pan movies in my blog, but for this movie I am going to make an exception.  Here is why.

I am a great lover of French romantic comedies, so I have a bias to like them even when they are just so-so.  In addition, I like movies that are multi-lingual, and this movie has French, English, Italian, and German sprinkled throughout.  So the playing field was decidedly tilted in this movies' favor, but that was not enough to save it.

First of all, the plot is a bit silly (even for the genre--it is not silly as in farce, it is silly as in dumb) and the dialogue does not save it.  Second of all, the movie is replete with cliches--so much so that I wondered if it was a parody, but from what I can tell by reading reviews it is not a spoof.  The reason I say that is because the degree to which the characters are exact stereotypes of their nationalities is so over-the-top as to be comical.  The Italian follows his heart even then it leads him astray.  The German is under emotional and over controlled.  The French woman is so flighty that she doesn't attend to basic tasks of daily living, and the Australian is an incompetent romancer.  I have never panned a French romance, but there is a first time for everything.