Le petit Nicholas

Obviously this film has been a great success in France why they are running it again.
Last time this film was shown at Cinéma Lux in La Châtre we missed it but tonight we attended this 'extra screening'.

This is a very charming film about the young Nicholas and his friends at a boarding school.
We get introduced to his friends with Nicholas voice over telling us about their different characteristics.
The director and the responsible for the casting has really succeeded in finding different characters for the different rôles in this film.
The intelligent, very studious boy with spectacles, the always tired one being punished for not doing his homeworks, the big, fat boy eating all the time and so forth.
It's somewhat like the seven dwarfs in Snow White, though not identical with them.
One of the boys tells the others that he is going to have a brother (or sister of course but these boys can only imagine it will be a brother as girls are no good anyway) and this makes him sad as he is convinced that his parents will neglect him and only pay attention to the 'newcomer'.
Before his parents told him the news about them having a child and him becoming a brother, they acted strangely, according to him.
The other boys wants to know how and he delineates some of the 'strange behaviours'.
One day Nicholas finds his parents acting in a similar way and he now fears that they are going to have another child and that he is going to become a brother.
From now one starts a process in which his friends participate. They have to get rid of this little brother of Nicholas when he is born. Nicholas don't want him to intrude and create 'problems' in their family relation. Among many other things they decide to hire a villain to 'kidnap' and abduct him. It's however not as easy as one might think or rather as they have thought it to be.
Parallell to this story we also get to follow other 'side stories' like the daily 'work' at school, getting to know the different teachers - also with special characteristics - being acquainted with the parents of Nicholas when they, among other things, wants to prepare a dinner for Nicholas fathers chief.
The scene with the dinner is magnificent! This very much thanks to the actress Valérie Lemercier who is a wonderful comédienne, acting with small but effective means, being the somewhat neurotic mother.
In all her eagerness to prepare a perfect dinner, she of course spoiles everything!
There is a particular scene where she want's to impress on her husbands boss and his wife, talking about 13th century Scandinavian litterature, trying to prononce the name of Snorre Sturlasson! It's just fantastic!
The actors are generally very good and it's not least impressing to see the young boys displaying a tremendously talented acting with a lot of humour and wit.