Critics reviews

In Dupieux’s absurdity, human behavior is not aleatory but reflects specific social and psychological realities... Mandibles critiques mankind’s ruthlessness and egocentricity characterized by literal greed — not a favorable subject when film culture is committed to comic-book fantasies and self-congratulatory political correctness. This rude farceur is truer to the era — more psychically revealing — than do-gooder social-justice filmmakers.

What works so well in "Mandibles" is how it's set up as a basic heist movie, using very familiar elements, so familiar they're almost tired cliches, before going completely off the rails into random demented territory.

Dupieux’s style of comedy isn’t for everybody. But there’s a lightness to “Mandibles,” and a twisted internal logic that pays off with a brilliantly funny final scene. Maybe this picture is just a string of wacky ideas, with no deeper meaning. But for those who take the ride, it’s an hour and 17 minutes they’re unlikely to forget.

“Mandibles” is sweet, simple, and oh-so-very stupid — a stupidity that’s oddly liberating, like making up ridiculous scenarios with a pal over bong hits.

Every frame encourages letting one’s guard down, just so the story can roll into a ball of sloppy chaos and make an appropriately goofy mess.

He takes something (some might call it something stupid, and Dupieux would probably agree) and leans into its stupidity with the passion of an artist, transforming it into something — well, still stupid, but majestically so.

Dupieux simply follows his deranged muse in whatever random direction it happens to wander. The results can be frustratingly slight and maddeningly amorphous, but it’s bracing to have absolutely no clue where a movie is headed.

By embracing conventional buddy-movie elements, Dupieux imbues his surreal shards of incident with more bite... the idle one-thing-after-another-ness of Mandibles is evocative, disturbing, and moving.

On the face of it, Mandibles appears to be a high concept gimmick crowbarred into a goofy buddy comedy, but the themes of friendship and despair just manage to shine through the weirdness.

Just like its two misguided heroes, Mandibles takes an almost lackadaisical stance on story. Not in the sense that Dupieux or his cast are lacking in enthusiasm or love for the tale—that comes through in bucketloads—but in that the destination of the movie doesn’t matter. It’s a fluid and delightful road trip of little to no consequence to the key players.

[T]here’s not a whole lot of filmmakers who could unite two brain-dead protagonists, a brain-damaged young woman and an oversized insect under one roof, and somehow transform them into elements of dark humor. In the otherwise stale world of French comedies, Dupieux stands so far out in left field that he’s become a genre unto himself.

“Mandibles” is as brazenly and riotously stupid as it sounds, but with a chill, dopey sweetness that makes it stick.