Gold Brick Parent Guide

In the small French city of Chartres, the Breuil family are the top of the food chain. As owners of a large perfume shipping company, they employ many of the citizens, and are both extremely wealthy and powerful. Tired of being stepped on by this elite family, Daniel (Raphaël Quenard) decides to give the Breuils their comeuppance by getting a job at their warehouse and stealing perfumes to sell on the side. As his operation grows, so do the risks he takes, and the consequences if he gets caught.

Gold Brick is listed as a comedy by Netflix, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a less funny comedy. Maybe the humor was lost on me through both the cultural and language barrier, but I did not laugh once in the entire runtime. The script offers some commentary on class divisions and the follies of the rich, but it’s all shallow and generic and the main wealthy character is given a lot of pathos by the end, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to hard hitting commentary. I didn’t find this film to be either funny or interesting, which unfortunately lands it squarely in boring territory.

Yes, I love a heist, but this heist primarily takes place in the last 10 minutes, almost none of the team are given any characterization, and the stakes are incredibly low. The only member of the team that the audience knows anything about is Daniel. The rest are just names and faces with no backstories or discernable personalities. That’s half the fun of a heist flick! And the caper itself is boring, with no interesting plans or twists. That’s the other half of the fun!

Thanks to high amounts of profanity as well as some violence and sex, I can’t recommend this film for family audiences. But even for adults with no qualms around that type of content, I don’t recommend it. Gold Brick is not a bad movie, but it’s so generic and boring that it’s not worth 90 minutes of your life. You could watch Ocean’s Eleven instead, which is an arguably much better use of anyone’s time.