OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
Music Box Films | Release Date: May 9, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
62
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
3
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The real joy here is the performance of Jean Dujardin, who, besides being very funny as the Gallic Maxwell Smart, is also enormously charismatic and is made to look uncannily (and I do mean uncannily) like the young Sean Connery of "Dr. No" and "Goldfinger." Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Nest of Spies may be a small, subtitled release, but it's also a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the upcoming big-screen adaptation of "Get Smart." See it and you'll have a substantial idea of what a spy comedy should be. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubTasha Robinson
The film bounces along on cheap but entertaining Mel Brooks-worthy audio and visual gags, like the live-chicken-throwing fight, or the sequence where the camera discreetly pans away from Dujardin and a partner making out on his hotel bed--only to focus on a full-length mirror in which they're still fully visible. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
A consistently entertaining parody that never once makes you feel like an idiot for laughing out loud at its idiocy. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
A huge hit in France, Michel Hazanavicius' straight-faced spy spoof unleashes a French operative of incomparable incompetence on the volatile Middle East of 1955. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter Addiego
A giddy French comedy. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
There are more chuckles than laughs, but the film does a witty job of replicating the hermetic, overlit shot language of '60s studio movies. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
For a parody, the movie is surprisingly competent in some of the action scenes, when the dim-witted hero turns out to have lightning improvisational skills. Read full review
70
VarietyLisa Nesselson
A spy spoof that -- rarity of rarities -- represents a remake actually worth making. Current comic fave Jean Dujardin plays title character OSS 117 as a kind of James Bond crossed with Maxwell Smart. Read full review
70
Village VoiceScott Foundas
A frequently uproarious send-up of Jean Bruce's long-running series of spy novels. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesMark Olsen
Light and fun, if also a little slight, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is like a pleasant sorbet to wash away the aftertaste of the pre-summer clunkers. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Director Michel Hazanavicius captures the jet-age atmosphere, form-fitting wardrobes, jazz-ethnic soundtrack and bouffant hairdos of JFK/de Gaulle-era espionage films in perfect detail, but it's Dujardin's performance as the suave, confident and utterly clueless Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath (to Francophones, a name that drips with phony aristocratic pretension) that gives "OSS 117" its edge. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJoshua Katzman
This French comedy fondly lampoons both the popular French spy movies adapted from Jean Bruce's novels in the 1950s and '60s and the colonialist era they were set in. Read full review
63
PremiereGlenn Kenny
It hardly adds up to much, but it doesn't mean to, and it'll leave you with a cleaner conscience than an Austin Powers picture. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
An arch espionage comedy that's never as amusing as it thinks it is. Read full review
60
EmpireDavid Parkinson
Plenty of mileage is derived from Dujardin's dismissal of everything Arab, Michel Hazanavicius also throws in some supremely silly running gags, while keeping the plot moving at a clip and establishing a rapport between the hapless hero and his insouciantly accomplished assistant, Bérénice Bejo. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Not that Cairo, Nest of Spies is meant to be a thriller, but even as a self-consciously anachronistic knockabout farce it rarely rises to the level of wit, either verbal or physical. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneSid Smith
A movie whose satire proves as lame as its clunky title. Read full review
30
Washington PostStephen Hunter
The comedy is strained to the point of lameness, most of it exaggerated clumsiness, stupidity or inappropriateness. Read full review
25
New York PostV.A. Musetto
Let the French stick to love stories and leave stupid comedies to Tinseltown. Read full review
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