The Intouchables

Directed by Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache

(R)

***

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The biggest box-office success in French cinema history is “a defiantly feel-good story,” said Claudia Puig in USA Today. The two main characters in this lightweight comedy “teeter” on the edge of racial stereotypes, but audiences have thus far forgiven it because it conveys a compassionate message “with upbeat verve.” Omar Sy and François Cluzet are “marvelous” in the roles written for them, said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. Cluzet is a rich, white paraplegic who’s taught to live more exuberantly by Sy, who plays his poor, black caretaker. Yes, the screenplay “reflects an underlying latticework of racist attitudes,” but it’s not as if such a story couldn’t happen, and part of the movie’s intrigue is in observing “the gulf in racial attitudes between France and the United States.” In any case, Sy’s “performance almost makes you forget how calculated the whole thing is,” said Stephanie Zacharek in Movieline.com. The actor is a “criminally likable presence.” He makes the film worth watching “not because he adequately fulfills any perceived notion of the joyful person of color, but because he quite simply seems filled with joy.”