Despite strong cast, French comedy drama ‘Sink or Swim’ mainly does the former

Veering between sentimental and salty, philosophical and goofy, writer/director Gilles Lellouche’s Gallic stab at a “Full Monty”-style uplifter is too waterlogged with the genre’s well-worn staples (training comedy, bite-sized humiliations) and too uninterested in story/character details (turning paunchy mopers into athletic competitors) to offer anything truly refreshing about the solution to middle-aged dejection. The irony is that the men’s final performance at the championships in Norway is touching enough that the lack of attention to how these misfits could have realistically gotten there makes “Sink or Swim” all the more frustrating.

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