Saturday, March 27, 2004

Monsieur Hulot's Holiday

I'm afraid I don't understand the appeal. Yes, Jacques Tati has a funny walk and inadvertently gets himself into numerous scrapes while on vacation at the beach, but the rest of the film is simply boring. I know perfectly well that people regard this as a classic of physical comedy, but frankly, there's very little of it in the film. Aside from his car (which is funnier than he is) and a silly set of tennis games, I barely cracked a smile during the entire viewing. Its saving grace is that it's filmed in black and white, and very capably. The beach scenes are the most beautiful, with the contrast between the sand, the ocean, the rocks and the umbrellas. But, really, why waste your time? It'd be more fun to pick up a film that has actual physical comedy in it, such as Big or even Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, for goodness sake.

original title: Les Vacances de M. Hulot
year: 1953
length: 85 min.
rating: 2.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046487/combined

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