I watched this one with my French class a few weeks ago, but forgot to write about it. I wanted to do something more cultural with them: expose them to things beyond the vocab and the snippets about daily life in France, so I watched and discussed a couple of my favorite French films with them (the ones acceptable by the school standard) and this was one of their favorites.
I was lucky enough to see this with a few friends at the Traverse City Film Festival a few years ago (the same year we saw "The Valet", another wonderful French comedy) and we all thought that it was wonderful, charming, and a nice story. The story itself, if done by a crappy American film company, would turn into a steaming pile of schmaltz: a man is basically challenged by his coworker to prove that he has a friend.
Sounds hokey, right?
Sure! But it's not. It's sentimental without being sappy, and a lot of that success comes from the leads: Daniel Auteuil (of "Jean de Florette" fame, among a bajillion others) as the rich guy who's got it all, save a real friend; and the remarkable Dany Boon as the trivia junkie taxi driver who gets pulled into Auteuil's web and finds so much more. This is also my favorite movie that uses "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" as a salient plot point. Sorry, Slumdog!
Score: 8/10
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