AllMovie

Intended as a kind of satire on a certain type of social-climbing mania, this routine comedy misses like a faulty engine. The drunken father (Philippe Noiret) of a typical, undistinguished middle-class family in Nantes is certain that he could have been -- should have been -- a great novelist. That conviction is paired with another, that his untalented son -- obvious to everyone but the family -- should be given the praise and emoluments that he deserves. When the aspiring pianist's teachers fail to bring out the genius hidden away somewhere inside his mediocrity, they meet a quick and watery end in the nearest river. The good but dull-witted commissioner of police is trying to figure out the identity of the serial killer fixated on piano teachers. Given that his talents match those of father and son, the dull-witted duo seem to be in no imminent danger of arrest.