AllMovie

The feature debut of prominent French director Patrice Leconte is a spoof of the detective genre, done in absurdist, deadpan style. Gaspard Gazul (Roland Dubillard), a harmless bus ticket puncher, has been blown up in his own water closet with the door locked from the inside. A po-faced police inspector (Jean Rochefort) and his bumbling assistant (Coluche) investigate the case. The denouement is remarkably nonsensical, as is most of the film's plot. Most characters are comic variations of archetypes from classical French whodunits.