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Jo

Jo

Movie · 1971 · 3 people

Jean Girault directed Jo, a 1971 French black comedy. Mixing crime with comedy, it runs about 85 minutes and stars Louis de Funès. It is based on Alec Coppel's 1958 stage play The Gazebo and is that play's second screen version, after the 1959 The Gazebo directed by George Marshall and starring Glenn Ford and Debbie Reynolds. In English-speaking territories the film goes by Joe: The Busy Body or The Gazebo.

De Funès plays Antoine Brisebard, a successful comic playwright, with Claude Gensac as his actress wife Sylvie. Brisebard is the target of a blackmailer called Jo, who threatens to reveal Sylvie's family link to a notorious criminal. The writer resolves to get rid of him and, pretending to research a crime play, picks a lawyer friend's brain about the perfect murder. He plans to bury the body under the foundations of his newly built pavilion. But the man he killed was not Jo, the real blackmailer having been killed elsewhere, and shoddy construction leaves the foundations useless as a hiding place. With Inspector Ducros (Bernard Blier) closing in, he must move the corpse.

The cast also includes Michel Galabru (Tonelotti), Guy Tréjan (the lawyer Adrien Colas), Jean Droz (Riri), Dominique Zardi and Henri Attal.

DirectorJean Girault

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Cast

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Michel Galabru Michel Galabru Film actor · died at 93 Dominique Zardi Actor · died at 79 Henri Attal Henri Attal Actor · died at 67

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Through different eyes

Yeşilçam Nostalgic A viewer raised on the classics, looking for warm storytelling and strong acting.

Louis de Funès's boundless energy, his flustered bustle and his expressions are the soul of this film too. A successful comic playwright planning the perfect murder to get rid of a blackmailer, then everything going wrong... Black comedy is not really my cup of tea, but de Funès's timing is so masterful that you can't help smiling. His interplay with Claude Gensac and Bernard Blier is a delight as well. Because it comes from a stage play, you can sometimes smell the boards; still, the graceful flavour of the old comedies is all there.

Family Viewer Asks whether the whole household can watch it; cares about humour and heart.

It's a funny film, but it's about a murder and a man trying to hide the body. The laughs come mostly from confusion and panic. Even so, a corpse being moved from place to place may seem strange or scary to small children. I'd say it suits ages twelve and up. Louis de Funès's antics will make the grown-ups laugh too, and grandparents will enjoy it.

Action & Thriller Fan Puts pace, tension and set pieces first; little patience for slow drama.

A murder plot, a blackmailer, an inspector on his trail and a body that has to be moved: on paper, a full-on thriller setup. But here everything is played for laughs. Things speed up as Inspector Ducros closes in, and those parts are genuinely fun. Still, you can tell it's a stage adaptation; the talky scenes sometimes slow the pace.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader reviews are below.

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