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The Intouchables Movie Review

The Intouchables is a 2011 French dramedy film directed by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano and starring Francois Cluzet and Omar Sy. It’s a populist, but sweet flick.

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“My true disability is not having to be in a wheel chair.

It’s having to be without her“

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An unusual friendship develops when a street smart immigrant is hired to take care of a disabled French nobleman. First and foremost, this is one of the most famous French movies of the decade and one of the highest-grossing both inside its country and internationally. It was such a big hit, in fact, that so many people at least have heard about it. I have never seen it before, but finally seeing it myself, I found it better than expected.

This is as populist a movie as they come as it was clearly intended for the widest audiences possible, and they were of course hugely successful at reaching those audiences. But wide appeal movies don’t always have to be bad, and this one is certainly quite good, though not great. I found the treatment of its subject matter obviously quite innocent and mostly very safe, but there is no denying the power in its central friendship, which is the heart and soul of the film.

The characters themselves are so wonderfully developed and performed, thus leading to the intensified emotional investment by the viewers. Omar Sy is so great in the role of Driss. He is uncultured and vulgar while also possessing a very dark, brutally direct sense of humor, but there is no denying that he is funny at times and his heart is in the right place.

Philippe himself is also terrific. Francois Cluzet’s performance here is truly amazing and it’s a shame that he did not receive an Oscar nomination for his phenomenal work here. I liked the backstory with the wife as it was quite touching and again the relationship between the two develops smoothly, and they have such genuinely infectious dynamics that made this movie click for so many.

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The Intouchables has pretty good dialogue, a lot of heart and a terrific first half, but the second half felt repetitive to me, the movie lost so much momentum in that part and the overall ending could have been more memorable.

The Intouchables is clearly one of those movies made to reach the widest audiences possible, which ended up happening as it was a mega hit internationally. While it is overly emotional and it lost a lot of momentum in its second half, the first one is great and there is no denying that its heart is in the right place. The performances from Francois Cluzet and Omar Sy are both amazing and the friendship between Philippe and Driss is the soul of the movie that is also quite funny in some of its dialogue.

My Rating – 4