A cheap, manipulative, film that seeks to exploit its audience

Rating: 2/10 (19 April 2016)

One of the most wonderful things about the art of filmmaking is that it is incredibly good at getting an emotional response from the people that consume it. Now that was a really pretentious way of saying that films are great because they can make use feel happy, sad, scared, etc. I know for me personally that a lot of my favorite films are the ones that are able to make me cry. And I think that we can all agree that it is truly a wonderful thing when a film is made with such devotion and passion that it is able to make its audience shed tears over fictional characters and events.
Unfortunately filmmakers know that audiences love when a film makes them cry, and some filmmakers will try and take advantage of that fact. They will make films that are filled with overdone clichés and over dramatized acting/dialogue in hopes of making the audience cry, because if you can get someone to cry at your film it's very unlikely that they will forget it, and they will probably like it. This is exactly the sort of film the Intouchables is, a cheap, insincere, artificial cluster of scenes that will do whatever is necessary to make the audience get emotional. These cheap films that target and exploit sensitive topics just so they can receive acclaim and attention, are in my opinion some of the worst films out there. They represent all of the worst aspects in filmmaking, and deserve to be called out for what they are, and they are detestable piles of complete s***.
I'm entering my third paragraph and I haven't even mentioned the acting, plot, cinematography or really any of the actual specifics of the film yet, and that's because regardless of whether you've seen it or not you can already predict everything that happens in the entire film. The plot is so structured and formulaic that it feels like it was copied and pasted from a text-book. The cinematography is at best dull, and at other times so bad I actually can not believe it was in a film with a 9.5 million euro budget. (which comes out to roughly 10.8 million dollars.) All of the actors give exactly what you'd expect from a movie like The Intouchables, and honestly I can't even remember a thing about any of there performances. Which is a compliment for a movie like The Intouchables.
The Intouchables received mixed reviews from critics, and was nominated for best foreign language films by the Golden Globes. Even though critics were split on the films quality, general audiences loved it. At the time of writing this review it is the 38th highest rated movie on IMDb, coming ahead of films like Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Seventh Seal, Ikiru, Vertigo, and even Citizen Kane. And I won't lie this upsets me, at least more than it should. The idea of a film as terrible as The Intouchables coming ahead films like the ones previously mentioned, (not to mention the dozens of other better ones in the top 250, and hundreds out of it.) just really destroys my faith in the film industry. I can not recommend that anyone watch this film ever. But even though I've been basically calling this film an indefensible offense on cinema. There are things out there that are much worse than it, so I won't give it the lowest rating possible.
2.1/10