‘My Father, the Hero’ (PG)

If the French had taken to EuroDisney the way Disney has taken to French farce, Mickey would be up to his little nibbler in brie. The love affair that began with 1986's "Down and Out in Beverly Hills," a remake of Jean Renoir's "Boudou Sauve des Eaux" ("Boudou Saved From Drowning"), continues to this day with "My Father, the Hero," a translation of "Mon Pere, Ce Heros," with Gerard Depardieu in a rollicking reprise of his title role.

A joint production involving talent and money from both sides of the ocean, it's a kind of cinematic franglais, with Depardieu speaking both French and English as a befuddled father on vacation with his suddenly sexy 14-year-old daughter (Katherine Heigl). Depardieu, an obliging buffoon, is this trifle's salvation as the heroic Andre, appropriately pere-shaped and increasingly put-upon by the child-woman Nicole.

A loving but neglectful father, Andre hasn't seen Nicole for almost two years when he arrives at his former wife's (Lauren Hutton) Manhattan condo to take the girl on an island vacation. But Nicky, as she now prefers to be called, is no longer the little girl he remembers, but a surly, headstrong teen. And like teens immemorial, she is horribly embarrassed to be seen traveling with her dad.

"Eesn't eet bootefool," says Andre of the full moon rising like a commemorative plate above the Caribbean. "It's okay," says Nicky, who isn't about to make up with her absentee father so easily. Partly to get even and partly to snare the island's only white boy-toy (Dalton James), she spreads the story that Andre is her lover and an international spy masquerading as her dad.

Andre remains happily, hulkily oblivious to his daughter's fabrication and is bewildered when he is snubbed and tsk-tsked by the predominantly nerdy Americans staying at the posh Bahamian retreat. Most of the humor is sophisticated slapstick, which Depardieu mastered in the hilarious trio of Francis Veber comedies he did with Pierre Richard in the '80s.

Veber and Charles Peters, who cowrote this screenplay, came up with an inspired bit that finds Andre, an accomplished pianist, invited to play something fun and French on Talent Night. Unfortunately, he decides on a tune from "Gigi" -- "Zank 'eaven for leetle girls," he sings with gusto as his affronted listeners leave in disgust.

While Depardieu and Veber have fun with French stereotypes, director Steve Miner sticks his nose up at American rubes, like the convention of accountants and their brassy wives who roll their eyes over Andre's carrying on with a child. And typical of Disney, the Bahamians are mostly steel-drummers, busboys and doormen.

Some Americans in the audience might well cluck their tongues at the way the skimpily attired 14-year-old Heigl's body is exploited by Miner's camera. Others may find it suspicious that in this day and age, a father books a one-bedroom cottage for himself and his teenage daughter. But Andre is about as predatory as Grandpa Walton.