The Intouchables

Enjoy this movie for what it is - the kind of motion picture that can cause Champaign-like giddiness - and don't obsess over how true-to-life this work of fiction is. Read full review

Let me come clean right now and tell you that I enjoyed The Intouchables quite a bit. If you're looking for a lightweight summer change of pace, with just a smidgen of Continental flair, here it is. Read full review

It's the kind of movie that inspires word-of-mouth recommendations by speaking the international language of culture clash. Read full review

The Intouchables works as a crowd-pleaser not because it's true, but because it's a plausible enchantment. Read full review

The Intouchables is an exuberantly charming French buddy comedy that proves an audience will suspend disbelief and follow an unlikely story as long as it's superbly crafted. Read full review

It has warmth, humor and an understated sweetness that is not to be taken for granted. Read full review

What it provides (instead of the thematically clever dialogue of typically subtle French comedy) is biting wit, poignancy and, forsaking some structural nuisances, the summer's best bromance. Read full review

There are plenty of reasons not to like The Intouchables, but Omar Sy's terrific performance blows right past them. Read full review

Not a great film but a warm one that pushes the viewer's emotional buttons so deftly it feels like a massage. My guess is that you will laugh and cry at all appropriate moments. Resistance is futile. Read full review

The film fulfills its feel-good promise, as long as it's seen as the fairy tale it was meant to be. Read full review

Take from the film's racial commingling what you want. Much of this may be old hat, even corny, and potentially offensive, but I haven't laughed out loud this often at a movie in ages. Read full review

It's worth noting that this movie is loosely based on actual people – except the real-life Driss character is, in fact, an Arab. If Driss had been an Arab, The Intouchables would have waded into less navigable waters, but it might have made for a tougher movie. Read full review

The power dynamic may charm the French, but it's likely to push the cringe buttons of local moviegoers in Obama's post-"The Green Mile America." Apart from the wince-inducing moments, The Intouchables is often a pleasant buddy picture. Read full review

It's the classic odd-couple buddy movie setup, only it'll pull at your heartstrings, whether you want it too or not. And you won't want it to, because it's sap. Read full review

This is a story that has been told time and again in the movies, and sometimes the performances overcome the condescension of the formula. Read full review

Sy and Cluzet are superb actors who demolish stereotypes about race and social class by finding a common humanity in their characters. Acting this good forgives a lot of sins. Read full review

A box office phenomenon in France, this crowd-pleasing drama is based on a true story but sticks closely to the template for a Hollywood buddy movie. Read full review

It is possible to summarize the experience of watching The Intouchables in nine words: You will laugh; you will cry; you will cringe. Read full review

In this sentimental feel-good saga of an ultra-wealthy quadriplegic and the petty criminal who becomes his caretaker, the chemistry between the two lead actors goes a considerable way toward elevating the broad-strokes culture clash. That's crucial to a film that is, in essence, a love story. Read full review

Actually, The Intouchables isn't bad - its merely shameless, but at least it's overtly so. Read full review

Sy and Cluzet give their parts more conviction than they deserve, even when the former is forced to re-enact the falsetto-singing-in-the-bubblebath bit from Pretty Woman. But even their energy can't revive a corpse this dead. Read full review

The lens through which the The Intouchables was filmed may be too rose-colored for some people's taste, but the window that these talented performers throw open -- a window onto the strange and touching friendship between two very different men -- is crystal clear. Read full review

Some of the elements in the film are inexplicable and some are undeveloped, but there are a handful of nicely crafted set pieces. Read full review

This tired little movie got on my last nerve. If Driss is so charismatic and so full of ingenuity, why isn't he using any of that skill to help lift up his family? Read full review

"Driving Miss Daisy" this ain't. Except that it sort of is. Read full review

This essentially good-natured movie, a massive hit in France, is more likely to strike American audiences as trite than offensive. Read full review

Corny, calculating and commercial...Their slickly executed culture-clash character piece is stuffed chock full of hard-knock life lessons that owe much more to the conventions of the screen than the tough realities of social deprivation and of the severely handicapped. Read full review

Cluzet and Sy nonetheless make for ingratiating foils; the extended opening sequence in which the duo outwits a pair of cops like a hell-raising Laurel and Hardy could be a stellar short comedy if it weren't married to the deadly self-serious shtick that follows. Read full review

A cheeky dream-drama about the friendship between a rich, white quadriplegic and a penurious black job-seeker, the premise of The Intouchables alone nearly renders analysis redundant. Read full review

The plot becomes disastrously condescending: the black man, who's crude, sexy, and a great dancer, liberates the frozen white man. The handsome Omar Sy jumps all over the place, and he's blunt and grating. Francois Cluzet acts with his eyebrows, his nose, his forehead. It's an admirable performance, but the movie is an embarrassment. [28 May 2012, p.78]

Though never known for their subtlety, French co-helmers/scripters Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache have never delivered a film as offensive as "Untouchable," which flings about the kind of Uncle Tom racism one hopes has permanently exited American screens. Read full review