Producers: Lilian Eche, Clément Calvet, Jérémie Fajner and Christel Henon   Director: Gilles Legardinier   Screenplay: Gilles Legardinier and Christel Henon   Cast: John Malkovich, Fanny Ardant, Émilie Dequenne, Philippe Bas, Eugénie Anselin, Al Ginter, Anne Brionne, Christel Henon, Stephanie Clemente Jodar, Océane Lannoy and Guillaume Legardinier   Distributor: Sunrise Films

Grade: B-

John Malkovich, so often required to be sinister on screen, gets to play nice in the comedy Gilles Legardinier has, with co-writer Christel Henon, fashioned from his 2012 novel “Complètement Cramé!,” which can be literally translated as either “Completely Burnt!” or “Completely Crazy!” but has finally been given the English title “Mr. Blake, at Your Service!”  (An earlier title, “Well Done!” still survives in some sources.) 

Whatever it’s called, the film is a pleasant but somewhat too easygoing ensemble piece, engaging in its individual parts but rather lumpy as a whole, lacking the impeccable precision and sense of inevitability with which the best comedies of this type unfold.

Malkovich plays Andrew Blake, a wealthy British businessman who’s bereft over the death of his wife Diane.  Over the objections of his friend Richard (Al Ginter), he decides to revisit the Beauvillier chateau in France where he and his wife had met and fallen in love—a flashback, luminous as shot by cinematographer Stéphane Le Parc at the Bois-Cornillé Château in Brittany that serves as the setting, shows her (Océane Lannoy) and the young Andrew (Guillaume Legardinier, presumably the writer-director’s son) in the estate’s park.

But Blake has misinterpreted an ad placed by widow Nathalie Beauvillier (Fanny Ardent).  He believes that by responding to it he is reserving a guest room at the château.  Actually, the ad was seeking applicants for the position of a butler to help prepare rooms for rent—something Mme. Beauvillier and her devoted housekeeper Odile (Émilie Dequenne) are considering as a means to prevent the forced sale of the heavily-indebted estate.  So when Blake arrives, he’s surprised to be relegated to a cramped servant’s room and instructed to be up early the next morning.

The misunderstanding is quickly resolved between Odile and Blake, but he decides to stay on anyway; they present him to Mme. Beauvillier, a regal presence hoping to save the estate by responding to the sweepstakes offers that flood her mailbox, as a butler serving on a trial basis. 

Blake, whose French is good but not perfect (Malkovich handling the dialogue somewhat haltingly), inserts himself into various situations in the household.  He attempts to advise Mme. Beauvillier on her financial problems, but she suggests that he should keep to his place.  He not only sets his mind to building a friendship with the brusque, demanding Odile but reconciling her with Philipp Magnier (Philippe Bas), the tongue-tied handyman who’s infatuated with her but whom the severe woman scorns—this even after Philipp had threatened him with a rifle as a possible poacher.

Then there’s Manon (Eugénie Anselin), the neighbor girl who’s been working as a maid in the house but has gotten pregnant by her boyfriend, who fled to parts unknown when she gave him the news.  Kicked out by her parents, she’s hiding in the barn, but Blake explains her situation to Mme. Beauvillier and Odile, who take her in.  Far less likable is Mme. Berliner (Christel Henon), an obnoxious local matron who pretends to be a friend of Mme. Beauvillier but actually is taking advantage of her straitened circumstances.  And what of Mephisto (played by a feline named Novehka), Odile’s cat, whose chubbiness Odile dismisses as the result of the meals she prepares so lovingly; Blake finds that the cause is rather different.

Some of “Mr. Blake” is droll, especially given Malkovich’s ability to add a mischievous twinkle to his eyes at the drop of a hat. (A routine in which he and Philipp exchange observations about how the English and French describe one another is a delight.)   And there are moments when it manages some depth, as in Malkovich’s scenes with the serene Ardant, especially one in which she explains why there’s an unmarked grave beside that of her husband on the grounds. 

Much of what happens, though, seems rather silly—Magnier’s constant inability to remember Blake’s surname, for instance, or his hobby of making elaborate protective havens for hedgehogs.  And when Richard and his wife Melissa (Anne Brionne) show up as houseguests and Richard makes a show of ordering Blake about, it seems a completely gratuitous—and unlikely—intervention.

Things really go off the rails toward the end, however, when Legardinier is suddenly in a rush to tie up all the loose plot ends into a tidy package and editors Yves Deschamps and Chrys el Alépée can’t oblige.   A sequence in which Blake and Philipp masquerade as thieves to give Berliner her well-deserved comeuppance is tonally off.  And when everything comes together in a big holiday finale, Blake’s daughter Sarah (Stephanie Clemente Jodar) abruptly pops up out of thin air, without explanation as to why she’d not been mentioned before—were father and daughter estranged?                     

Still, though “Mr. Blake” strives for a magical feel it doesn’t achieve, it’s an engaging enough divertissement, particularly since in the hands of Le Parc and production designer Hérald Najar (as well as the caretakers of the Bois-Cornillé Château, of course) the picture looks so lovely, and Erwann Chandon complements the visuals with a charming score.

And, of course, it provides a nice change of pace for Malkovich, who’s always worth watching.