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The French don't do subtitles, they dub everything.
It's horrible.
I feel like this was true in the 90s and 00s, but since the advent of really big movies like Marvel, cinemas are less stingy with subtitles. Small ones may only do dubs, but in big cities, you'll find places that always have subs. I don't think I've ever noticed any egregious translation shitshow in the subs - maybe precisely because the industry is already used to actually translating something you could say in French. At most, back in the 90s you would always get attempts at heavily localized expressions that verge on cultural erasure (Thanksgivings episodes were always "family reunion"), not so much blatant nonsense, but now we're more comfortable with just doing proper translations. Unless the publisher just doesn't care to put any money in this show.
I've no idea what the state of subbed TV shows is right now, though. I'm sure TV still prefers to air dubs, but the relevant channels have the option of switching between subbed and dubbed, and then there was the whole DVD/BR industry that still always had subs, and AFAIK that has always worked well. Like, maybe 30 years ago your favorite show had DVDs with no English track, dub only, but that shit stopped. I'm not sure how that industry has been doing in the recent years of streaming taking over, and I don't even know if streaming services in France have sub options or dub only...
Luckily movie theatres in Switzerland and Belgium regularly show foreign movies with original soundtrack and French subtitles for all who prefer it that way.
For sure. Being a native English speaker, it's worth paying a little extra to go to the cinema in Switzerland for me.
No wonder why English proficiency in France is bad despite being the most visited country.
My guess is that it's because French is comparatively-widely-spoken relative to most other languages in Europe.
The benefits of speaking a language increase the more people who can speak it
it gives you access to more people out there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
According to this, as of 2026, there are about 1,493 million people in the world who can speak English.
There are about 334 million people in the world who can speak French. That's second only to Spanish among European languages behind English.
So if you already know French, learning English will give you access to something like 4.4 times as many people as you could otherwise communicate with.
Contrast that with, say, Icelandic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language
An Icelandic speaker picking up English gives them access to about 3,828 times as many people. That's a a lot more content you have access to, people you can communicate with, etc. The payoff to an Icelandic speaker from picking up and using English is considerably larger than the payoff to a French speaker; they've got more incentive to be able to use it well.
Imo, it's a combination of that, and really outdated teaching methods.
La Francophonie is large enough that people never need another language to access additional information. They even have their own pronunciations for Anglophone celebrities, which is bizarre at first.
I once had a conversation in a bar where people were talking about a famous musician named 'Kenny West.' My friends were astonished that I had never heard of him. It took me like 5 minutes to realise that they were talking about Kanye West...
Like I mean come on, he says his own name constantly in his own songs....
Like that episode of Seinfeld with the guy who always refers to himself in the third person