In 18th-century France, Baron Grégoire Ponceludon de Malavoy, a young, penniless, and naive aristocrat and engineer, devises a scheme to drain the marshy region of the Dombes that is causing disease, in order to improve the lot of the peasants living there.

Ponceludon realizes that the court is corrupt and hollow but finds solace in Mathilde de Bellegarde, the doctor's daughter, who agrees to marry a rich old man to support her science experiments and pay off her father's debts.

Some years later, in 1794, after the Revolution has forced many nobles into exile, the Marquis de Bellegarde, a refugee in Great Britain, spends some time in a nostalgic conversation.

The scenes outside the residence of the Marquis de Bellegarde were shot at the Villiers-le-Bâcle château, property of the comedian Yves Lecoq.

[3] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 80 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

[6] Ridicule demonstrates life at the heart of the 18th century, where the only way to have an audience with the king was by using wit, or using intelligence and beautiful language.

The heroes of Ridicule, the Baron de Malavoy, although a stranger to this atmosphere, is obligated to enter there to be able to address the king, so that he can obtain the funds necessary to dry the marshes of the Dombes.