Jean-Paul Guigue and Dimitri Planchon’s Blaise is an all-time great animated comedy and one of the funniest films in years.
The titular Blaise (Timéo) is a loser. Even his school counselor thinks so, inviting his mother, Carole (Léa Drucker), and father, Jacques (Jacques Gamblin), in for an appointment to discuss the situation. But Carole and Jacques are also losers. Jacques is unemployed and still struggling to extricate himself from his mother. And yes, he will absolutely be scheduling follow-up appointments with the counselor in an attempt to therapize his own issues. Carole has recently started an executive position at a large company, but she’s not cut out for management, and her desperation for employee approval quickly threatens to upend her career.
But things are looking up for Blaise. He has recently gotten a girlfriend, Joséphine (Nina Blanc-Francard). Because they met at a Marxist party, Blaise lies and tells Joséphine that he lives in poverty. Likewise, Joséphine lies to Blaise rather than admit that she is the daughter of the obscenely wealthy CEO who, unbeknownst to either of them, just happens to be Carole’s new boss. The lies spiral from there. Joséphine escalates her political rhetoric in order to impress Blaise. Blaise yes-ands in order to impress Joséphine. Rinse and repeat.
What follows is quite possibly the most entertaining vivisection of polite society that I’ve ever seen. Blaise takes the chaos that often accompanies an eagerness to please and naturally elevates it until it has reached the point of absurdity. Riots are started. Extramarital affairs are had. Terrorism is committed. All out of fumbled attempts to avoid confrontation. This is the sort of film where everything could be solved with a simple conversation. Yet it is so pointed in its mayhem that viewers who generally hate that sort of thing will only feel validated.
Blaise is the culmination of 20 years of ideas.
Blaise began life as a comic strip in Fluide Glacial about 20 years ago, with co-director Dimitri Planchon writing and illustrating. His collaboration with co-director Jean-Paul Guigue starts with the series television adaptation in 2016, and that series preserved the unique visual style of the comics. This new film does not, opting instead for a slightly more realistic approach that in practice only looks more grotesque.
The result is something of a cross between Richard Ayoade’s Submarine and the television series Angela Anaconda. It takes a moment to get used to but does wonders for the tone of the film, while smartly never becoming one of the punchlines.
The script, written by Planchon with Clémence Lebatteux, manages to be one of the more intricately plotted comedies in recent memory. Antics escalate in a way that remain believable no matter how utterly horrifying they may be. These antics will often arrive at a denouement that feels natural, giving the viewer a moment of reprieve, only to then escalate even further. And since Blaise is more focused on its laughs coming from character relationships than traditional punchlines, the film only gets funnier as we come to care more about the ensemble.
Everything from the writing to the abrasive score adds up to the full, delightful experience.
One of the film’s most impressive assets is Alexis Pecharman and Denis Vautrin’s score. The upbeat, high-tempo, and frequently overlapping melodies arrive with a frenetic delivery that only elevates the chaos of each scene. The score is also largely a cappella, which means that at its busiest it takes on the effect of a chorus of screaming voices atop the already screaming dialogue. It’s something that could easily upset the entire film if done poorly, but Pecharman and Vautrin tackle it with deliberate and meticulous intent. The result is utterly chaotic and also completely delightful.
I love comedy, but it’s common for those I watch movies with to assume that I don’t. A medical condition called blunted affect minimizes the extent to which I naturally express emotion. It’s generally easy to mask, but I’m generally not focused on masking when I’m watching a film. Ergo, I only laugh when something is extremely funny. That was not a problem with Blaise, which had me laughing for the entire runtime. I couldn’t tell you the last time I laughed this much at a film. Neither could my wife, who had to come shush me because I was laughing so much at my screener that it was interfering with our children’s sleep.
The bottom line.
But comedy isn’t the only merit here. Blaise manages plenty of interesting comments about the awkwardness of adolescence. And the awkwardness of adulthood, for that matter. There are moments of quiet poignancy and moments of extremely loud poignancy. It is quite unlike anything I’ve seen before. I’ve already bought all three collected editions of Planchon’s original Blaise comic. There’s no English translation and I don’t speak a word of French. That’s fine. I just just need more of it in my life. And, likely, so will you.
Blaise screened as part of Fantasia Fest 2026. Watch the trailer here.
Images courtesy of KG Productions.
REVIEW RATING
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Blaise - 10/10
10/10
Brogan Luke Bouwhuis is a writer and film programmer whose frequent pop culture deep dives have allowed him to write about everything from the Richard Gere gerbil rumor to the history of the holiday yule log video. He co-hosts the Franchise Fiends podcast, co-captains the narrative shorts program at the Slamdance Film Festival, and co-created three children with his wife, Jessica.
