Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Nice Girls’ on Netflix, a Goofy French Buddy-Cop Comedy That’s Good for a Few Yuks

The title Nice Girls (now streaming on Netflix) is a play on words, since it’s a French movie set in Nice, and it’s about girls. Well, women. Policewomen, to be precise. The postcard city on the Riviera is the backdrop for a wacky action-comedy with enough nut shots to fill, like, 15 percent of the nut-shot quota of an Adam Sandler yukfest. Yes, that’s a lot of nut shots. But I’m tempted to say Nice Girls is more sophisticated because it’s French, and because it takes place in a locale with significantly fewer Costcos and Arbyses in the establishing shots. Maybe I’ll justify this assertion by the end of the review – or maybe I won’t?

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The Gist: Nice is on HIGH ALERT. An anti-fossil-fuel eco-summit is coming to town, and the keynote will be delivered by the French version of Greta Thunberg. OK, maybe it’s not on HIGH ALERT, maybe just regular lowercase alert alert. But bigwigs will be there and they need security. All that burbles in the background as Leo (Alice Taglioni) chases Bat (Baptiste Lecaplain) along the beach. She’s a cop and he’s a – well, I don’t know what he is. An informant, maybe. A hacker, for sure. A wannabe cop, absolutely. And maybe she has a thing for him? She finally catches him and rubs his shoulders kinda like she wants to rub more than just his shoulders. Anyway, her purpose is to find Ludo, her brother, also a cop. He’s been missing for a while. Went to Germany and then… nothing. Curious. And Bat’s no help, but at least he’s cute.

Leo, we should note, is a slob. Always has that just-rolled-out-of-bed look. Cigarette ash in her hair. Jorts. That kind of shit. And her car is two, maybe three hundred years old. It’s a character of its own around here. Leo creeps in late to the summit-security meeting being run by Chief Hernandez (Noemie Lvovsky), who, we quickly learn, is an unpredictable lunatic of the type that populates very silly movies like this. Leo finds out that Ludo’s arrived at the airport so she rushes down there to find out he’s in a coffin. Whiplash. And he can’t get a proper ceremonial sendoff until internal affairs completes its investigation. Leo’s heartbroken. She listens over and over again to the last message Ludo left her: “Hey chubs, it’s Ludo. Call me back when you’re done jacking off.” She weeps.

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And then Leo wants to lead the investigation. Of course she does. But Hernandez, despite being insane, rightly says no. So in comes Melanie (Stefi Celma) from Hamburg to take the reins. Leo shirks her summit duties to snoop around for Ludo-related clues – because also of course she does – and butts heads with Melanie, who’s described as a “supercop,” likely because she shows some serious hand-to-hand combat skills. Or foot-to-nuts, as needed. Sometimes headbutt-to-nuts even. The two eventually chill out and unite in their investigative goosechasey farting around, which occurs within the parameters of a plot that’s too moronically convoluted to get into, but I will say it involves a couple of incompetent crooked cops, a smorgasbord of villains, assistance from and sexual tension with Bat, and the inevitable hand-over-your-gun-and-badge scene, except with a twist that’s sorta almost funny. Chaos reigns!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Nice Girls isn’t in the same ballpark as The Nice Guys , so don’t even think about letting it remind you of that. The Heat is a closer comparison.

Performance Worth Watching: There isn’t much to these characters. They’re flimsy as wet cardboard. But Taglioni is consistently amusing in her physical performance, coloring the character with slyly comic slovenliness.

Memorable Dialogue: Leo gets her undercover-cop metaphor-lingo mixed up:

Leo: The turtle’s head is emerging. I repeat, the turtle’s head is emerging.

Melanie: No, “the fox is in the henhouse.” A turtle head is when you need to- (Melanie gets snatched by a bad guy)

Sex and Skin: A random naked granny, for some reason.

Our Take: No one in their right mind will accuse Nice Girls of being a masterpiece, but it has enough laughs to keep the burner on even though the ramen never boils over to madcap hilarity. That’s something, at least. It’s a fairly slipshod endeavor, likely by design, because there’s very little here that the film takes seriously – note how Leo’s grief manifests in her playing that profane voicemail repeatedly, which is nothing if not a running gag. And a pretty good one, if dark comedy tickles your undercarriage.

Director Noemie Saglio’s loosey-goosey tenor extends to the action sequences, which occasionally pop with clever shots and bits of visceral choreography, but their rhythm is sometimes broken by clunky slapstick indulgences. It’s definitely no Jackie Chan feature; it’s barely a lesser Beverly Hills Cop . Something Paul Feig directed, though? Sure.

And again, the plot is over-the-top tangled, and it feels as if that’s by design. You know, nothing matters so might as well make it as ridiculous as possible , which is about a half-shade shy of nihilism, if you’re feeling less generous. The story incorporates some reasonably impish twists and a few wheezy jabs at PC culture (and political satire), and concludes with a moderately tense extended action sequence with a decent punchline. Bottom line, Nice Girls is funny enough, I guess! And if I had ended that sentence with a period instead of an exclamation point, I might not land on the recommendation that you…

Our Call: …STREAM IT. Funny enough is still funny.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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