MOLIÈRE
PG-13, 120 minutes

Molière (the stage name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) was born in France in 1622, and spent his career writing and directing plays that exploded the pretensions, prejudices, and phony intellectualism of the upper-middle classes, blowing holes in their bland, bloodless bourgeoisie taste with great blasts of satire. So it’s a fitting act of revenge that the French biopic “Molière” is designed to appeal to the very people whom Molière mocked. Plush and antiseptic, this is a dead-on-arrival corpse of a film, embalmed in good taste and possessing all the vigor and artistry of a bowl of potpourri.

Set during a mysterious several-month gap in Molière’s official biography, “Molière” is “Shakespeare in Love,” only without the subtlety, Tom Stoppard, a big budget, or good actors.

Molière (Romain Duris) is arrested for debt but subsequently sprung by the mysterious Monsieur Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini) and whisked away to that gentleman’s country estate. There, he’s forced to assist Jourdain in the performance of a horrible little play the latter has written to impress a snobby minx who runs a fashionable salon.

Disguised, unamusingly, as a priest, Molière helps himself to generous servings of the cougar of the house (Laura Morante), whose love eventually inspires him to return to Paris and write the great plays for which he shall be remembered forever. It’s the kind of simpering movie that covers its mouth when it giggles at its own stale jokes.

The saving grace of “Molière” is Mr. Luchini, who takes the form of a 17th-century Don Knotts. His head is packed so tightly with delusions of grandeur that his eyes bulge. Though his performance starts as pathetic comedic cringing, it comes to assume real dignity. Molière would have hired him. This movie? Molière would have gagged.