Yes, it is a joke, compared to Castilian(Spanish) that has an almost plain pronunciation, French has a lot of accent.
On the other side, the Catalan language shares a lot of words with them because Cataluña(Aragon Kingdom) was a French creation as a princedom to content the Muslim invasion on Middle Age. Also by its geographical position on the Pyrenees mountain range between France and Spain.. But the similitude is only on the vocabulary, the pronunciation is similar to Castilian.