We Were Misled

Rating: 5/10 (6 July 2012)

This movie depicts the dawning of the AGE of the Talkies. Big name silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) doesn't like it one bit.
In the beginning, George smiles a lot and so do you. And, when Peppy (Berenice Bejo) comes on the scene there are more smiles. It's a contagious thing like yawning. Then the studio wants to do talkies and the smile is gone from George, who wants to continue to do silent films. Now, the rest of the story is a real downer. What happened? The promos didn't show this.
Yes, the story is sad in too many respects as we don't like to see anyone lose work especially when someone is very good at his job. Poor George just won't get with the program and progress. While it may have been true that many silent film stars had a too high a vocal timbre and wouldn't have been allowed to speak in talkies except to act in non-verbal shots, this was not the case with George. George's problem was George. He was in a comfort zone and nothing would remove him from it. But, wait a minute: there is something you will hear at the end of the movie that was, perhaps, the real reason George wouldn't do talkies. He had a French accent. Could this be the real reason? We'll never know.
We were misled. The promos and all the other hype indicated this would be a fun movie. Not so. For most of the movie we are watching a man down on his luck and barely scraping by and, of course, we kept hoping things would change for him. But, the way this was going I abandoned that hope. This was too sad. The promos misled us again.
The movie won a lot of Oscars and I am not sure why. For my money, the promos should have been awarded the Oscars. They were fun, witty, and the music was toe-tapping good. Okay, to be fair, the music deservedly did win for original score.
The acting, in my opinion, was not Oscar worthy for anyone, but the performances all around were very good and that was not the problem. The problem was the plot. It was too sad, and not very entertaining. Hey, here we are sitting around in silence and this wasn't going the way we thought it would. Sound does come into play at certain parts, and you wished for more, but all we see is George moping around everywheresilently. What would have made this somewhat better (with or without sound) was film critics and Variety reporters chiming in, big studio bosses discussing the situation with and about George not wanting to do talkies and maybe Peppy (whose star was rising in the talkies) trying harder to get through to George. This would have given the film more depth. Didn't happen.
Now, nothing was given away as we all know that talkies were the coming thing. You knew that, right? We just wanted to see the promos again, not the movie. Okay, what we really wanted was a happy ending, but we were taken on a very long, non-scenic, agonizing - are we there yet? - route. This was, indeed, over-hyped and over- rated. We were misled. (5/10)
Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: No, not even in the subtitles. Disturbing Image: Yes, a loaded gun is placed in a mouth.