Since Jerry Lewis is a hero in France, it's apt that Jean Reno borrows his eye for comedy from one of Jerry's best friends: Sammy Davis Jr.

Made between two dismal rehashes - Just Visiting (an American copy of unfunny French smash, Les Visiteurs) and The Pink Panther - Shut Up is proof again of why the artist formerly known as Léon should stick to straight roles.

It pairs Reno's taciturn thief Ruby with Quentin, an idiot with verbal diarrhoea played by the once-mighty Gerard Depardieu.

The chalk-and-cheese felons end up in the same jail cell when Ruby is nicked after stealing €15million from the crime boss who just killed his girlfriend and bungling robber Quentin is apprehended in a UGC cinema.

See how the children are lapping up the UGC experience! Even when the police are dragging him away, Quentin can't take his eyes off that big UGC screen. Which company would possibly co-finance and distribute a movie with such blatant product placement?

D'accord, Ruby's elaborate escape plan is upstaged by Quentin’s blundering break-out and the pair are soon racing around Paris, pursued by the law and Ruby's girlfriend's killer's thugs.

This sounds more complicated than it is. Like its target audience, it's actually very simple. Ruby wants revenge and the stolen loot; Quentin wants to open a café with his new friend.

Writer-director Francis Veber scripted the original La Cage aux Folles, but that movie's charms are entirely absent from this ill-fitting mix of infantile humour, brutality and sentimentality.

The slapdash auteur wrings all the laughs he can get out of men in womens' clothes, a toy that goes 'moo', people being punched in the face, and having the chief villain adopt a Herbert Lom-style twitch – i.e. none.

If 'French comedy' is an oxymoron, this is the moron.

Elliott Noble