The film continues the regional and language jokes of "Welcome to the North", looking for warmth in clichés and satirizing hypocrisy in embarrassment. At the heart of the film is the dislocation of identities: the amnesiac designer is beaten back into a prototype, clumsily clashing between poor relatives from the provinces and Parisian high society. But these are just self-deprecations in French movies. Northerners can use rudeness and poverty to mock the gaudy Parisians. After all, no matter how they have an accent, no matter how they are laughed at, they are still authentic French, not those immigrants
.
The story of the film is interesting, but the overuse of the "Yankee" concept is a bit tiresome. Plot-wise, it's easy to see where the movie is going, right up to the final scene, where the film emphasizes to the audience the idea of "accepting one's roots" too many times. The romance between Valentine and Constance is both awkward and a little tense, especially since the latter's behavior is unpredictable, she sometimes acts like she can't stand Valentine, and in the next scene she's strangely sympathetic to him . In the end, she embraces Valentine, who is a "Yankee" at heart, and it's clear the film's message is that true love won't be held back by absurd accents. Byrne uses as much of his style as he can, and does elicit some genuine laughs, but the film loses momentum after the middle. The film should be well-received by French audiences who, after all, like this hilarious, regional comedy, and when it is released overseas, perhaps French-speaking regions would be better, since many of the dialect jokes have to be translated
.
