The French played a very important but very liimitted role in the revolution. Their Navy's arrival in yorktown, the war's final battle, deprived the British of hope and triggered their surrender. It is possible the British Navy
might have rescued them otherwise. The French did no heavy lifting and their help was mostly ambivalent or absent before the battle, but we do owe them a debt.
France did make a vital difference with both funds and then (near the end) forces.... but remember that it was the Royal government which was doing this to hurt their enemies the Brits, so I'm not sure how much undying gratitude the actions of a long-defunct Monarchy earns the people of France 224 years later......
I believe that France did pay for a good % of the arms and supplies used by our colonial revolutionaries, though I don't recall the figures. The most vital contribution was that the French fleet (when it finally arrived) blocked the British fleet from rescuing Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781, so yes that was a critically important contribution that led directly to the successful end of the war for our revolutionaries.
Not that what happened 224 years ago can make up for French perfidy in recent years..... watching Jacques 'Iraq' Chirac and friends suck up to Saddam and undermine the USA has been an experience provoking intense nausea......there is no question in my mind that if France had not sought to undermine us in the past few years that a lot of things would have gone better on the ground in Iraq. Chirac helped to get a lot of wonderful US people killed by insurgents who would have been weaker and/or non-existent if there had been a united front from the UN Security Council pushing Saddam out of power and pressuring Syria and Iran to stay the hell out....