In 2008 Dany Boon’s comedy “Bienvenue Chez Les Ch’tis” was a surprise box office hit that went onto become the top-grossing French film of all time (and neither Catherine Deneuve nor Gerard Depardieu were even in it). He also wrote, directed and starred in his latest comedy, “Rien à Déclarer.” But can it possibly live up to its predecessor?

Dany Boon plays Mathias Ducatel, a French border guard in a dinky little town on the Franco-Belgian border, circa 1993, when the European borders are about to open. His nemesis, the rabidly Francophobic Belgian border guard Ruben Vandevoorde is played convincingly by the Belgian actor Benoît Poelvoorde. Because Mathias has been secretly dating Ruben’s sister Louise for a year, he agrees to his boss’s request to join Ruben in the first Franco-Belgian police unit to catch drug smugglers once the border opens. Thus, hilarity ensues when the two sworn enemies are placed in a pathetic patrol car (with a drug-sniffing poodle and one of the first “portable telephones”) and attempt to work together to capture the crooks.
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