So, why... [spoilers]

To trick the dumb Americans... the ones who paid money to see this.
Actually, it wasn't that bad. That was the best looking scene early on, if the most illogical.
In a normal film they might have deleted that scene, but this flick needed an establishing scene that looked semi-professional and film-like, so my guess is that's why they kept it. It looked like a good way to open the picture, even if it made no sense in retrospect.

The whole thing didn't need to be more than 50 minutes long. I didn't feel that cheated by the material, though it was much too thin to withstand the hour and a half. They didn't need the trite pining-for-the-same-girl triangle, for one thing. The black brother was not given much of a character, and by the second half they didn't have much for Rudd to do either. And of course the French were treated as no more than cardboard cutouts.

Looks like I just talked myself into changing my rating from 5 to a 4/10. On second thought this was fairly bad; I half-way enjoyed it, but I'm terribly sick with the flu now and wasn't thinking clearly when I was watching. The more I think of it, the more I want to throw the who cat and crew in the moat. Shame on this unscrupulous Jesse Peretz and his sub-Fisher Price PixelVision moviemaking! What a lemon...head.