Product Description

Kate flies to Paris to keep her fiance from running off with a French woman, but becomes involved with a sexy French thief who assures her he will help.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 11-JAN-2005
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1343 in DVD
• Brand: RYAN,MEG
• Released on: 2000-01-18
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 111 minutes

Amazon.com
Meg Ryan emerges bloodied but unbowed from this botched comedy by Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill). Ryan plays a woman whose fiancé (Timothy Hutton) leaves her for a Parisian beauty. She jets over to the City of Lights to fight for her man, but an incapacitating fear of flying forces her to seek help from a fellow passenger, a French thief played by Kevin Kline, who then tutors her in the ways of getting her beau back. Kasdan seems incapable of pacing the story, let alone getting a firm grip on its comic tone and intentions. The production sputters and regroups and stalls repeatedly, forcing Ryan, particularly, to find the boundaries of her own screwball performance. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker
Meg Ryan travels to Paris to win back Timothy Hutton, who has gone off with a French girl. On the plane, she meets Kevin Kline, a French small-time crook and full-time slob. They win each other's hearts, but, boy, does it take a long time: two hours later they're just working up the courage to hold hands. (The title promises a steaminess that never arrives.) This is cinema as soufflé: light and fluffy if you do it quickly, leathery and sunken if you don't. The director, Lawrence Kasdan, doesn't. (How did the hazy shots of vineyards or the discussion of visa applications make it through the final cut?) The best reason to stick around is Kline's broad, shrugging pastiche of a Frenchman-the dumbest role in the picture, and the only performance that comes alive. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Always good!
My Wife and I have seen this movie about 10 times over the last few years, and it's always been good.

Great Pick
This is a great movie for everyone who always wanted to visit France and never had the chance. The chemistry between Meg and Kevin is so great. The effortless way they seem to carry this movie makes us feel we are right there on that train with them. I recommend this movie for people who like a light comedy with a happy ending.

I like Meg Ryan, Kevin Kline, Lawrence Kasdan, but...
"French Kiss" just didn't do it for me. I was expecting sparks, amusement--what I got didn't do it.

When the film opens, we see Kate (Ryan) in a plane trying to make herself comfortable. In the middle of takeoff, she loses it and tears what turns out to be a plane simulator apart. She returns home to tell her fiancee Charlie (Timothy Hutton) he's going to have to go to the medical conference in Paris without her. They part with plans to buy a home together from the nest egg Kate has built up. She gets the word a few days later, via phone that Charlie's fallen in love with a French goddess and he's going to get married before he returns.

So, Kate gathers her courage and actually takes that plane to Paris to get back her man. Her seatmate on the flight is Luc (Kline) a handsome Frenchman who unbeknowst to her swindles a grape plant and a diamond necklace in her luggage. He offers her a ride to Paris from the airport believing that he can recover the goods from her. When they separate and Kate's baggage gets stolen, Luc helps her retrieve it, but he realizes he doesn't have the diamond necklace so he has to chase her across France to get it...

Writing it, the story sounds a lot better than what I sat through. The humor just wasn't there for me--both Kate and Luc had 'problems' they had to overcome during their trip. Both of those problems felt more like too much information than anything interesting. None of the characters actually 'clicked' to me. While the plot was enough to keep me watching, it wasn't enough to make me actually 'like' the film. I guessed the mystery and was just waiting to be proven right. The soundtrack, sadly, was so many of the same old songs I hear on almost every American made French movie.

If you love French films, any of the principal actors, romance--you may like this film. I just considered it 'lite' on all of the elements that should have been present.

Rebecca Kyle, May 2008