Critic Reviews

Sink Or Swim works because of a screenplay with some genuinely funny moments and a jaunty, confident approach from Lellouche that displays his sure comic timing and faith in the performers.

A gentle, genial dip into a pool of midlife despair.

It’s well-acted and broadly sympathetic, but a time-killer of a comedy that kills too much time for its own good.

The humor is sometimes strained, and Lellouche doesn't always demonstrate the lightest of touches.

Veering between sentimental and salty, philosophical and goofy, writer/director Gilles Lellouche’s Gallic stab at a “Full Monty”-style uplifter is too waterlogged with the genre’s well-worn staples (training comedy, bite-sized humiliations) and too uninterested in story/character details (turning paunchy mopers into athletic competitors) to offer anything truly refreshing about the solution to middle-aged dejection.

The reliably charismatic work of its players, notably ringleader Mathieu Amalric, keeps this somewhat soggy macaron diverting.