Delayed Reaction: The Intouchables

Premise: A rich quadriplegic man bonds with a poor blank man who he hires as his caretaker.

 

I don't understand the French box office. French cinema is incredibly highly regarded. They have the Cannes film festival. The French New Wave is a favorite of movie snobs of all ages. Some of their top grossing movies are just plain weird though. It's hard to get exact historical numbers, especially factoring in inflation, but The Intouchables is one of the 2 or 3 biggest French film of all time at the box office in France. It's a fine movie, but I don't see anything about it that screams "Everyone in France should see this". The Intouchables surpassed 2008 comedy mega-hit Welcome to the Sticks, starring no one who has made any noise across the Atlantic and with a plot that sounds like a very forgettable comedy. Maybe it's not really that weird. Japan's list isn't all Miyazaki movies. China's list has some understandable blockbusters like Wolf Warrior 2 and The Wandering Earth, but there's also the 2021

comedy Hi, Mom. I have never heard of many of the movies at the top of the Italian list either. And, to be fair, in France, the top ticket seller ever remains Titanic. Most of these international lists all have Titanic and Avatar filling up the top of the list. Every country has its regional weird successes. Adjusted for inflation, in the US, Gone with the Wind is still the biggest movie ever. E.T. is in the top 10. Those are pretty weird when you think about it. And take a look at what The Numbers says about Canada.

 

Anyway, The Intouchables is fine. It's a perfectly agreeable movie. It's an interesting inversion of the white savior narrative [kind of]. It's still a rich white man introducing a poor black man to a world of privilege and wealth, but the white man is completely at the mercy of the black man. That's an odd power dynamic. Mostly the movie avoids those thorny race issues beyond the surface level. The relationship between Francois Cluzet and Omar Sy feels earned. I believe them getting along as they do, and the way they help each other tracks with their personalities.

 

There isn't that much to the plot though. The beats are all very familiar. It feels like this became a blockbuster the way that The Blind Side did. It's a simple pitch but without a real hook. It's mostly carried by star power then word of mouth. Because, the big takeaway from this movie is that Omar Sy is a star. Hollywood has dabbled in using him in several movies, but it looks like Netflix's Lupin is when Americans finally caught onto him. It's hard to come away from The Intouchables disliking him.

 

However, I keep coming back to the fact that if this was an American movie starring, like, Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston, it would be completely unremarkable. It's fine, but had I not been curious about watching successful French movies, I never would've watched it and wouldn't've missed out on much.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend