Imagine a blithe, covertly bisexual James Bond swanning around pre-Suez Cairo in a send-up directed by the early Zucker brothers. In OSS 117: le Caire, nid d’espions, French helmer Michel Hazanavicius finds the comic secret ingredient in a hilarious revival/adaptation of Jean Bruce’s bestselling (and pre-007) novels. As the fastidious hero Hubert, leading man Jean Dujardin could be a young Sean Connery’s Gallic twin. (Dujardin’s waggly eyebrows are obscene.) Vain, ignorantly irreligious (“I was woken up by a guy screaming on a tower!”), a mambo-mad demon on the dance floor, OSS 117’s hero — undercover as a poultry executive — seduces exotic local birds (all slyly played) and digs into his impossible mission to make “the Middle East safe and calm” for French imperialism, leaving no poitrine unogled. Not even his own, merci beaucoup. As we await Maxwell Smart’s return, it’s OSS 117 who’s wearing the hottest, tightest three-button suit in the spy game. 99 minutes | French | Kendall Square
