Touches the heart and busts the gut.

Rating: 8/10 (24 November 2012)

Feel-good French film The Intouchables tells the true story of the burgeoning friendship between an old, aristocratic invalid and his young, impoverished caretaker. Sounds pretty lame, doesn't it? It sounds like the kind of film that, at some point, seems destined to travel down one of two paths, descending either into a lecture on the class differences between certain socioeconomic groups or a comparison between the relative hardships of near-poverty and living with a severe disability.
And therein lies the excellence of this film. Not only does it avoid both topics and, in so doing, keeps itself from becoming overly melodramatic, but it actually subverts audience expectations by persistently looking, as those Monty Python boys suggested, on the bright side of life. A big part of the film's charm is the effortless interplay between Omar Sy (caretaker Driss) and Francois Cluzet (Philippe), who clearly have a lot of fun with their roles while concurrently displaying total immersion in their characters.
If managed poorly by directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, Driss's avalanche of one-liners and practical jokes at the expense of his handicapped friend could've come off as misplaced and in poor taste. However, the acting pair's wit and comic timing turns virtually all hit-or-miss jokes into gold and contributes greatly to making The Intouchables...well...just plain funny.
In the same way that 'fun for the whole family' has comes to be interpreted as 'a living hell for anyone over six' by contemporary viewers, the classification of a 'dramedy' has come to imply a meagre handful of humour, quickly pushed aside to make room for a sob story. The Intouchables gets the formula right, injecting varied forms of comedy in between a genuine, emotionally investing subplot involving the lovelorn Philippe's pen pal Eleonore (Dorothee Briere). A toe-tapping soundtrack brimming with disco classics serves as the icing on the cake for this potentially Oscar-winning delight.
*There's nothing I love more than a bit of feedback, good or bad. So drop me a line on jnatsis@iprimus.com.au and let me know what you thought of my review. If you're looking for a writer for your movie website or other publication, I'd also love to hear from you.*