“Hope well and have well.”
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My father was the one who first recommended me Intouchables, I remember finding a copy for him before and the he watched it and immediately ordered the blu-ray version. Kind of sounds like me and The Way, Way Back or Perks of Being a Wallflower. I knew I had to watch this film, but for whatever reason it took the backseat for a couple years and I ended up forgetting about it. It wasn’t until my best friend asked me if I have seen it, where it re-clicked in my brain that I needed to watch it, yet it still took the backseat. Until this morning where I finally got around to it, and kicked myself right after for putting it off for so long.
Intouchables is a biography, comedy and drama film about a wealthy man becoming a quadriplegic from an accident, he ends up hiring an ex-con from the projects as his caregiver. What follows is a story of heart-warming friendship.
The film is directed and written by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano. I have never heard of either of these directors, which to me isn’t a surprise as this is a foreign film. French language with english subtitles, so we get to see the beautiful architecture of Paris. Nakache and Toledano’s filmography consists of Let’s Be Friends (2005), Those Happy Days (2006), and Samba (2014). I have not seen anything else they’ve done, but it would be interesting to watch Samba as it reunites these directors with one of the stars of the film Omar Sy. It’s always a pleasure for me, to step out of the normal language of films and experience something completely new, with a new style of filmmaking. I was absolutely hooked by the films story of this wonderful friendship and it showed how each of these two completely different people ended up changing each others lives in many different ways. The film was also masterfully crafted with some great directing and very subtle but captivating camera work.
The cast of this film along with the beautiful story is where this film truly shines. The main characters are Francois Cluzet (Phillipe) and Omar Sy (Driss). There are many more actors in this film, but I’m just going to focus on these two because of the friendship this story presented to me.
Francois Cluzet’s filmography consists of a whole bunch of films I’ve never heard of at all, not even mentioned in passing, but a few are Irreplaceable (2016), One Wild Moment (2015), and Quantum Love (2014). I would definitely be interested in watching a few more of Cluzet’s films, I thought he did a wonderful job in this movie. His role as Phillipe was executed masterfully and you were really drawn into his character.
Omar Sy’s filmography consists of Those Happy Days (2006), X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014), Samba (2014), Jurassic World (2015), Burnt (2015) and Inferno (2016). I’m happy to say that I have seen and heard of a couple of these films. I’d like to watch his other films that he made with the directors – Those Happy Days (2006) and Samba (2014) because I thought that has a team, the 3 of them made a wonderful movie together and I’m quite sure that these other two films would be great as well. But in Intouchables, I felt that Sy really stole the show. You knew that when he was on screen, that you were gonna get a bit of comedy out of it. He was hilarious, serious, and delivered some fantastic comedic chops.
Together Sy and Cluzet were fantastic together, they played off each other super well and i felt like they had great chemistry together. I felt like it was a real friendship that I was watching being formed, without all that hollywood glamor.
The music in this film was also fantastic. There was a scene where Phillipe was making Driss listen to classical music and it was a lot of fun to see them play around with each other. In return, Driss then shows him his style of “Classical” music and plays Earth, Wind and Fire in return. It just made for a great scene.
I felt inspired and this movie really warmed my heart. I like to think that I have the greatest friends in the world, whether they’re my oldest friends, my newest friends or my best friend and you know if I was at any other place when we first met, the chances of us being friends now or having the same group of friends would be extremely slim or in all honesty probably wouldn’t have ever happened. So this movie made me feel thankful for them. It also showed me and inspired me in that we never know who or what is going to come along and change our lives, that we need to stay open minded and keep our eyes open, because an opportunity could come along and we could miss it and be completely different people then who we are right now or what we could potentially be.
I wanted to keep this short but sweet.
Intouchables gets a 5/5 from me. I laughed, I teared up and my heart was so warm and full.
This is a movie I will definitely be recommending people and that I will definitely return too in the near future.
I don’t agree however with Hollywood wanting to remake this film. Well its not that I don’t agree with the remake, I don’t agree with the casting choices. They want Bryan Cranston to play Phillipe, which I think could work. But they want Kevin Hart to play Driss. Not that I have anything against Kevin Hart but I truly believe that his style of comedy is too over the top and too loud for this type of movie. I think someone more like Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight) would be a better fit. Rhodes isn’t extremely well known but is a fantastic actor. For this movie, a intimidating but timid actor is needed, as it adds to the ambiance and the story for the movie. It would be a completely different film with a completely different message otherwise. You will need to watch this movie to find out, and we can discuss if you agree or disagree with my little rant here. But I will wait until the movie is completed before I completely pass judgment
Until next time! Stay inspired!
-Andrew