The French have rather taken exception to Ridley Scott's A Good Year - a major movie flop recently listed by Variety as one of 2006's notable turkeys.

Indeed, according to the BBC, the critics came close to a bit of port-blockading and lorry-burning after enjoying the loose adapation of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, which cast battling Ozzie Russell Crowe as an Englishman living in the rural Luberon region.

Le Parisien derided the movie's shameful stereotyping of our Gallic cousins with: "Everyone knows the French are grumpy and dirty, wear espadrilles and drive Renault 4s."

Mon dieu. We'd like to suggest that the French will really have something to moan about when they get the Mel Gibson Braveheart treatment, with a sneering and grumpy Alan Rickman as Napoleon dressed in espadrilles and driving a battered Renault 4 force-feeding garlic and stuffed songbirds to sobbing Spanish villagers during the 1808 Peninsular War. ®

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