Stuck Together Parent Guide

It’s March 2020 and French President Emanuel Macron is urging his fellow citizens to do their part in their war against the novel coronavirus. With Covid-19 spreading through the population, a lockdown has been imposed and the effects ripple through the residents of one Parisian apartment building.

As can be expected in an ensemble film, the tenants are an oddly assorted lot. There’s Martin, a raging hypochondriac, with his clever lawyer wife, Claire, and their daughter. Above them lives Toby, the only resident who owns his unit and who looks down on everyone else and spends his time trying to persuade his wife to move back in with him and their two kids. There’s Agathe, a very pregnant wannabe singer, and her husband, Samuel, a fitness instructor who has moved his classes online and jealously watches his wife’s growing digital popularity. The building superintendent is worried about his wife, who’s in hospital with covid. The owner of the main floor bar is concerned that the lockdown will finish off her business (and Toby hopes it will so he can open another vape shop there). The mad scientist is conducting unregulated vaccine experiments on rats – until he starts looking for pets to use as test subjects. And everyone is worried about the mystery tenant they never see, who comes and goes at odd hours.

While it’s possible that this motley assortment of quirky characters could have produced an entertaining comedy, it didn’t happen here. Stuck Together is excruciatingly bad. The characters lack any subtlety or nuance. Yvan Attal plays Dr. Gabriel with scenery-chewing enthusiasm – think Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future and then dial it up a notch. The other men in the movie are so annoying that I started hoping their wives would divorce them (and I’m a believer in marriage!) Frankly I can’t see any reason for women to remain married to men who are neurotic, needy, and punitive; bigoted and bullying; or self-absorbed and envious of a partner’s success. Just watching Claire and Agathe try to live with their infantile husbands is painful for anyone who believes that marriage is based on mutual respect.

Given the shallow characters, it comes as no surprise that the writing is equally flat. Resolution to the relationship issues is unconvincing: the script doesn’t give any reasons for the husbands changes of behavior – or any reason why their wives should put any faith in its durability. Other plot developments are highly predictable – except for Dr. Gabriel’s inexplicable decision to start conducting vaccine experiments on his fellow tenants without any oversight or proper consent.

The stress of Covid-19 has been a shared global experience and, heaven knows, we could use a film that helps us laugh at some of the weirder aspects of the crisis. Sadly, Stuck Together fails to deliver. What it provides instead is dozens of curse words, terrible relationships, and unconvincing story arcs. Maybe I got it wrong – maybe this is a horror movie instead of a comedy. Being stuck with these characters while they drain two hours from your life is certainly a terrifying prospect.