The Wing or the Thigh?

The Wing or the Thigh? (L'Aile ou la Cuisse, 1976) is a French comedy starring Louis de Funès that you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Claude Zidi, it follows Charles Duchemin, the publisher of France's most feared restaurant guide.

Duchemin inspects kitchens in disguise, swapping wigs and accents so no maître d' ever spots the man who can make or break a dining room. Then everything goes wrong at once. Industrialist Tricatel is buying up restaurants and feeding the nation synthetic food cooked up in a lab, his son Gérard would rather run off to the circus than inherit the family trade, and on the eve of a live TV showdown Duchemin loses the one thing his career depends on: his sense of taste. De Funès does what he does best, twitching, scowling and exploding, while a young Coluche brings clumsy warmth as the reluctant heir.

This is one of de Funès's last great comedies and a sharp jab at the rise of fast food, a fight between real cooking and plastic convenience that plays sharper now than it did in the seventies. Good for an easy family night, especially if you grew up on Fantômas and the Gendarme films. Stream The Wing or the Thigh? (1976) online on iFILM.