A French Look At Race And Class

Rating: 7/10 (11 November 2014)

After he becomes a quadriplegic from a paragliding accident, an aristocrat (François Cluzet) hires a young man from the projects (Omar Sy) to be his caretaker.
The Independent called it a "a third-rate buddy movie that hardly understands its own condescension....Why has the world flipped for this movie? Maybe it's the fantasy it spins on racial/social/cultural mores, much as Driving Miss Daisy did 20-odd years ago – uptight rich white employer learns to love through black employee's life-force. That was set in the segregationist America of the 1940s. What's this film's excuse?"
While "the Independent" is right to call out the film's unrealistic portrayals of race and class, perhaps it somewhat misses the point. This film is obviously humorous, clearly not based on reality, and is probably not meant to be taken seriously. The movie has very much the same spirit as "The Birdcage" (at least the American version, if not the French one).
Now, this means the film also happens to be overrated, currently (November 2014) sitting high on IMDb's Top 250. A good comedy, yes, but not a film that offers any sort of deeper meaning or one that will remain important over the long term. While popular and a box office record holder, this is not a title one expects to be considered a "classic" later on.