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The Intouchables (2011)

Country: France

Genres: Biography, Comedy, Drama

Taglines: Sometimes you have to reach into someone else's world to find out what's missing in your own.

Director: Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano

Writers: Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano

Stars: François Cluzet, Omar Sy, Anne Le Ny, Audrey Fleurot, ...

In Paris, the aristocratic and intellectual Philippe is a quadriplegic millionaire who is interviewing candidates for the position of his carer, with his red-haired secretary Magalie. Out of the blue, the rude African Driss cuts the line of candidates and brings a document from the Social Security and asks Phillipe to sign it to prove that he is seeking a job position so he can receive his unemployment benefit. Philippe challenges Driss, offering him a trial period of one month to gain experience helping him. Then Driss can decide whether he would like to stay with him or not. Driss accepts the challenge and moves to the mansion, changing the boring life of Phillipe and his employees.

88 | 2012-05-23 | James Berardinelli

Enjoy this movie for what it is - the kind of motion picture that can cause Champaign-like giddiness - and don't obsess over how true-to-life this work of fiction is.

80 | 2012-05-23 | Andrew O'Hehir

Let me come clean right now and tell you that I enjoyed The Intouchables quite a bit. If you're looking for a lightweight summer change of pace, with just a smidgen of Continental flair, here it is.

75 | 2012-06-01 | Joe Williams

It's the kind of movie that inspires word-of-mouth recommendations by speaking the international language of culture clash.

75 | 2012-05-31 | Stephen Cole

The Intouchables works as a crowd-pleaser not because it's true, but because it's a plausible enchantment.

75 | 2012-05-24 | Claudia Puig

The Intouchables is an exuberantly charming French buddy comedy that proves an audience will suspend disbelief and follow an unlikely story as long as it's superbly crafted.

75 | 2012-05-24 | Rex Reed

It has warmth, humor and an understated sweetness that is not to be taken for granted.

70 | 2012-06-04 | Sara Maria Vizcarrondo

What it provides (instead of the thematically clever dialogue of typically subtle French comedy) is biting wit, poignancy and, forsaking some structural nuisances, the summer's best bromance.

70 | 2012-05-31 | Bill Goodykoontz

There are plenty of reasons not to like The Intouchables, but Omar Sy's terrific performance blows right past them.

70 | 2012-05-26 | Richard Corliss

Not a great film but a warm one that pushes the viewer's emotional buttons so deftly it feels like a massage. My guess is that you will laugh and cry at all appropriate moments. Resistance is futile.

70 | 2012-05-24 | Joe Morgenstern

The film fulfills its feel-good promise, as long as it's seen as the fairy tale it was meant to be.

67 | 2012-06-06 | Marc Savlov

Take from the film's racial commingling what you want. Much of this may be old hat, even corny, and potentially offensive, but I haven't laughed out loud this often at a movie in ages.

67 | 2012-05-26 | Peter Rainer

It's worth noting that this movie is loosely based on actual people – except the real-life Driss character is, in fact, an Arab. If Driss had been an Arab, The Intouchables would have waded into less navigable waters, but it might have made for a tougher movie.

67 | 2012-05-23 | Lisa Schwarzbaum

The power dynamic may charm the French, but it's likely to push the cringe buttons of local moviegoers in Obama's post-"The Green Mile America." Apart from the wince-inducing moments, The Intouchables is often a pleasant buddy picture.

63 | 2012-05-31 | Steven Rea

It's the classic odd-couple buddy movie setup, only it'll pull at your heartstrings, whether you want it too or not. And you won't want it to, because it's sap.

63 | 2012-05-30 | Roger Ebert

This is a story that has been told time and again in the movies, and sometimes the performances overcome the condescension of the formula.

63 | 2012-05-24 | Peter Travers

Sy and Cluzet are superb actors who demolish stereotypes about race and social class by finding a common humanity in their characters. Acting this good forgives a lot of sins.

60 | 2012-05-31 | J.R. Jones

A box office phenomenon in France, this crowd-pleasing drama is based on a true story but sticks closely to the template for a Hollywood buddy movie.

60 | 2012-05-24 | A.O. Scott

It is possible to summarize the experience of watching The Intouchables in nine words: You will laugh; you will cry; you will cringe.

60 | 2012-05-24 | Sheri Linden

In this sentimental feel-good saga of an ultra-wealthy quadriplegic and the petty criminal who becomes his caretaker, the chemistry between the two lead actors goes a considerable way toward elevating the broad-strokes culture clash. That's crucial to a film that is, in essence, a love story.

60 | 2012-05-24 | Stephanie Zacharek

Actually, The Intouchables isn't bad - its merely shameless, but at least it's overtly so.

58 | 2012-05-23 | Sam Adams

Sy and Cluzet give their parts more conviction than they deserve, even when the former is forced to re-enact the falsetto-singing-in-the-bubblebath bit from Pretty Woman. But even their energy can't revive a corpse this dead.

50 | 2012-05-31 | Michael O'Sullivan

The lens through which the The Intouchables was filmed may be too rose-colored for some people's taste, but the window that these talented performers throw open -- a window onto the strange and touching friendship between two very different men -- is crystal clear.

50 | 2012-05-31 | Mick LaSalle

Some of the elements in the film are inexplicable and some are undeveloped, but there are a handful of nicely crafted set pieces.

50 | 2012-05-31 | Wesley Morris

This tired little movie got on my last nerve. If Driss is so charismatic and so full of ingenuity, why isn't he using any of that skill to help lift up his family?

50 | 2012-05-29 | Mark Jenkins

"Driving Miss Daisy" this ain't. Except that it sort of is.

50 | 2012-05-25 | Farran Smith Nehme

This essentially good-natured movie, a massive hit in France, is more likely to strike American audiences as trite than offensive.

50 | 2012-05-23 | Neil Young

Corny, calculating and commercial...Their slickly executed culture-clash character piece is stuffed chock full of hard-knock life lessons that owe much more to the conventions of the screen than the tough realities of social deprivation and of the severely handicapped.

40 | 2012-05-22 | Keith Uhlich

Cluzet and Sy nonetheless make for ingratiating foils; the extended opening sequence in which the duo outwits a pair of cops like a hell-raising Laurel and Hardy could be a stellar short comedy if it weren't married to the deadly self-serious shtick that follows.

38 | 2012-05-22 | Joseph Jon Lanthier

A cheeky dream-drama about the friendship between a rich, white quadriplegic and a penurious black job-seeker, the premise of The Intouchables alone nearly renders analysis redundant.

20 | 2012-05-23

The plot becomes disastrously condescending: the black man, who's crude, sexy, and a great dancer, liberates the frozen white man. The handsome Omar Sy jumps all over the place, and he's blunt and grating. Francois Cluzet acts with his eyebrows, his nose, his forehead. It's an admirable performance, but the movie is an embarrassment. [28 May 2012, p.78]

20 | 2012-05-23 | Jay Weissberg

Though never known for their subtlety, French co-helmers/scripters Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache have never delivered a film as offensive as "Untouchable," which flings about the kind of Uncle Tom racism one hopes has permanently exited American screens.