Sporting (French) Wood

Much like Jerry Lee Lewis, Woody Allen is well-loved in France. In other words, the French have got a major woody for Woody. In fact, this article says that Woody has recently appeared in a French tourism board video during which he urges Americans to set aside their differences with their French compatriots and "fall in love with France again."

In following with our theme of Frenchified American movie names, Woody has some real gems which are shown here. "Take the Money and Run" (one of my personal favorites; a real "old school" Woody Allen movie with a lot of short, literary gags) becomes "Prends l'oseille et tire-toi"--a translation which is pretty literal but uses the word "l'oseille" which is an older slang word for money that I had never heard before. Also, the movie "Mighty Aphrodite" is interestingly transformed to "Maudite Aphrodite" in order to preserve the rhyme, though it means something entirely different ("maudite" = "cursed"). "Small Time Crooks" becomes "Escrocs Mais Pas Trop" (literal translation: "Crooks But Not Too Much". And my personal favorite, the movie "Sleeper" (a comedy about a man who is revived from cryogenic freezing to wake up in the future) is altered to "Woody Et Les Robots" ("Woody and the Robots"), which in my opinion is a better title than the American version...