Hippolyte
Christian Clavier
Hippolyte
Million Dollar Madness
“One night to fix a million mistakes and save his job.”
5.2
2025
Comedy
Director: Grégoire Vigneron
Overview
Under immense pressure and amidst competition with a duplicitous colleague, Stan, the ambitious and very serious operations manager of a construction firm reaches breaking point when he learns that he’s been unfairly laid off by the company’s tyrannical CEO. He impulsively steals one million euros from the company’s vault, tosses away the key to the safe and hastily flees with his fiancée Marine… Before discovering that his termination was a mistake, and he is actually being promoted! Stan has until sunrise to return the money to the vault. But having thrown away his key, and with the only spare inside the CEO’s own apartment, he must reluctantly enlist the help of Hippolyte, Paris’s most unpredictable locksmith. The night promises to be full of twists and turns!
Cast
Stan
Rayane Bensetti
Stan
Annabelle
Julie Ferrier
Annabelle
Marine
Claire Chust
Marine
Esther
Charlotte Gabris
Esther
Maxime
Martin Verset
Maxime
Richard
Gilles Cohen
Richard
Aslan
Jean-Luc Couchard
Aslan
Fred
Léonard Berthet-Rivière
Fred
Michaël
Cédric Moreau
Michaël
La mère d'Hippolyte
Maria Verdi
La mère d'Hippolyte
Reviews
✦ AI-generated review
The Currency of Chaos
The "one wild night" narrative is a deceptively difficult tightrope in cinema. From Scorsese’s *After Hours* to the Safdie brothers' *Good Time*, the best entries in this subgenre function as pressure cookers, stripping away a protagonist’s social armor until only their rawest instincts remain. In *Million Dollar Madness* (*Le Million*), director Grégoire Vigneron—best known for penning polished gems like *Molière* and *Le Petit Nicolas*—returns to the director’s chair after a significant hiatus to tackle this trope with a uniquely Gallic flavor. What begins as a corporate farce quickly dissolves into a kinetic study of status anxiety, anchoring its absurdity in the terrifying fragility of modern employment.
Vigneron’s visual language here is markedly sharper than the warm nostalgia of his screenwriting past. He frames the corporate world not as a place of business, but as a sterile, hostile geometric landscape. The film’s first act is dominated by cold blues and grays, emphasizing the isolation of Stan (Christian Clavier), a man who has poured his soul into a company that views him as a line item. When the narrative shifts to the streets of Paris, the palette explodes into sodium-vapor oranges and deep, inky blacks. The camera becomes restless, mirroring Stan’s unraveling psyche. Vigneron understands that for the comedy to land, the danger must feel genuine; the "ticking clock" isn't just a plot device, but a rhythmic hammer beating against the protagonist’s chest.
The film’s central conceit—a "reverse heist" where the criminal must break back *in* to return the stolen loot—is a brilliant inversion of genre expectations. It transforms the object of desire (the money) into a burden, a radioactive isotope that Stan must shed to survive. This allows Vigneron to explore a potent theme: the terror of getting exactly what you think you want, only to realize it doesn't fit the life you've curated. Stan’s journey isn't about greed; it’s about a desperate reclamation of dignity that goes horribly wrong. The film suggests that in the corporate ladder, one false step doesn't just knock you down a rung; it throws you into a different genre entirely.
At the heart of the chaos is the friction between Christian Clavier and Rayane Bensetti. Clavier, the grandmaster of French bourgeois panic, finds a fresh gear here. He avoids the temptation to play Stan as merely pompous; instead, he infuses him with a tragic brittleness. We watch a man whose entire identity is tied to his job title disintegrate in real-time. His foil, the locksmith Hippolyte (Bensetti), serves as the chaotic variable Stan cannot control. Their dynamic moves beyond the tired "odd couple" trope because Vigneron treats the locksmith not as a sidekick, but as a representative of the world Stan has ignored—messy, unpredictable, and technically skilled in ways a middle manager can't comprehend. The scene where they attempt to breach the CEO’s apartment is a masterclass in physical comedy, but it also underscores a class divide: Stan knows the codes, but Hippolyte holds the keys.
Ultimately, *Million Dollar Madness* succeeds because it refuses to let its characters off the hook easily. While it delivers the requisite twists and slapstick beats expected of a mainstream comedy, it leaves a lingering aftertaste of melancholy. It posits that the corporate structure is a house of cards, where "promotion" and "termination" are separated by a razor-thin margin of misunderstanding. Vigneron has crafted a film that is undoubtedly entertaining, but beneath the laughter, it whispers a nervous warning about the volatility of success. It is a slick, breathless ride that proves the most dangerous prison is the one we build for ourselves, usually out of ambition.
The "one wild night" narrative is a deceptively difficult tightrope in cinema. From Scorsese’s *After Hours* to the Safdie brothers' *Good Time*, the best entries in this subgenre function as pressure cookers, stripping away a protagonist’s social armor until only their rawest instincts remain. In *Million Dollar Madness* (*Le Million*), director Grégoire Vigneron—best known for penning polished gems like *Molière* and *Le Petit Nicolas*—returns to the director’s chair after a significant hiatus to tackle this trope with a uniquely Gallic flavor. What begins as a corporate farce quickly dissolves into a kinetic study of status anxiety, anchoring its absurdity in the terrifying fragility of modern employment.
Vigneron’s visual language here is markedly sharper than the warm nostalgia of his screenwriting past. He frames the corporate world not as a place of business, but as a sterile, hostile geometric landscape. The film’s first act is dominated by cold blues and grays, emphasizing the isolation of Stan (Christian Clavier), a man who has poured his soul into a company that views him as a line item. When the narrative shifts to the streets of Paris, the palette explodes into sodium-vapor oranges and deep, inky blacks. The camera becomes restless, mirroring Stan’s unraveling psyche. Vigneron understands that for the comedy to land, the danger must feel genuine; the "ticking clock" isn't just a plot device, but a rhythmic hammer beating against the protagonist’s chest.
The film’s central conceit—a "reverse heist" where the criminal must break back *in* to return the stolen loot—is a brilliant inversion of genre expectations. It transforms the object of desire (the money) into a burden, a radioactive isotope that Stan must shed to survive. This allows Vigneron to explore a potent theme: the terror of getting exactly what you think you want, only to realize it doesn't fit the life you've curated. Stan’s journey isn't about greed; it’s about a desperate reclamation of dignity that goes horribly wrong. The film suggests that in the corporate ladder, one false step doesn't just knock you down a rung; it throws you into a different genre entirely.
At the heart of the chaos is the friction between Christian Clavier and Rayane Bensetti. Clavier, the grandmaster of French bourgeois panic, finds a fresh gear here. He avoids the temptation to play Stan as merely pompous; instead, he infuses him with a tragic brittleness. We watch a man whose entire identity is tied to his job title disintegrate in real-time. His foil, the locksmith Hippolyte (Bensetti), serves as the chaotic variable Stan cannot control. Their dynamic moves beyond the tired "odd couple" trope because Vigneron treats the locksmith not as a sidekick, but as a representative of the world Stan has ignored—messy, unpredictable, and technically skilled in ways a middle manager can't comprehend. The scene where they attempt to breach the CEO’s apartment is a masterclass in physical comedy, but it also underscores a class divide: Stan knows the codes, but Hippolyte holds the keys.
Ultimately, *Million Dollar Madness* succeeds because it refuses to let its characters off the hook easily. While it delivers the requisite twists and slapstick beats expected of a mainstream comedy, it leaves a lingering aftertaste of melancholy. It posits that the corporate structure is a house of cards, where "promotion" and "termination" are separated by a razor-thin margin of misunderstanding. Vigneron has crafted a film that is undoubtedly entertaining, but beneath the laughter, it whispers a nervous warning about the volatility of success. It is a slick, breathless ride that proves the most dangerous prison is the one we build for ourselves, usually out of ambition.