Amelie

[CMJ]

This film is a "fantasy" pure and simple. Not like a FOTR or HP...but a fantasy all the same. It is also a remarkable little romantic comedy. It's a film that reminded me of many...yet it's unique.

To call the film stylish is an understatement. The film wallows in it's uniqueness throughut. The acting was good..but this film isn't about acting; it is about mood. And it succeeds brilliantly with it's mood. It's not a "terrific" movie...but it has stretches of brilliance. It's barely 2 hours long yet drags at times.

Nonetheless it's a exhilirating little picture...I really enjoyed it.

[Jedieb]

I haven't heard anything about this movie. Can you give us some details on the cast and director? Maybe a link? It sounds like a good date movie.

[ReaperFett]

It's French, and that's all I know :)

[CMJ]

It's up for Best foreign film..and 4 other oscars. here's the synopsis I found on Hollywood.com Jedieb. :) And yes..it would be a good date movie.



Amélie

Synopsis:
Bursting with imagination and having seen her share of tragedy and fantasy, Amelie is not like the other girls. When she grows up she becomes a waitress in a Montmartre bar run by a former dancer. Amelie enjoys simple pleasures until she discovers that her goal in life is to help others. To that end, she invents all sorts of tricks that allow her to intervene incognito into other people's lives, including an imbibing concierge and her hypocondriac neighbor. But Amelie's most difficult case turns out to be Nino Quincampoix, a lonely sex shop employee who collects photos abandoned at coin-operated photobooths

[Jedieb]

a lonely sex shop employee who collects photos abandoned at coin-operated photobooths

Holy crap, I thought I was the only member of the LSHEWCPAACOP Association! ;)

[CMJ]

LMAO Jedieb!

[Champion of the Force]

My mother has seen it. She said it was nice film, but awfully weird :huh. Take that for what you will. :)

[JonathanLB]

Of course it is weird, it's FRENCH! It's a terrible film.

I don't want to give any more comments, so let me just post my review here and I will delete it as soon as I launch my movie site because at that point, hehe, I don't want my copyrighted stuff floating around the net, but this will be fine. I wrote this last night:

Amelie (2001)
Jonathan L. Bowen

Amelie is a French film starring Audrey Tautou as a character of the same name who, in searching for happiness, decides to perform random acts of kindness for other people around her. Amelie begins after she discovers a hidden box in her apartment full of childhood toys from a person who lived in the apartment during the 1950’s. She makes sets a goal to find the person whose toys she discovered and return the items to him, but even after she has done so, she decides to make whatever difference she can in the lives of people she knows. Her deeds are all about helping others, until love finds Amelie.

To say that Amelie is a disappointment is a vast understatement. For a film that critics have called one of the best of 2001 and even most audiences have embraced, Amelie is entirely lacking in plot and intrigue. The movie is just utterly boring in every way imaginable. The movie industry is all about creating stories that take people out of their (often) somewhat mundane lives and into a fantasy world where anything is possible, but Amelie focuses mostly on ordinary events and ordinary characters who are not even remotely interesting. Even Amelie herself is not a character to which one can become easily attached because she has no great and worthy goal or quest, just performing a few little simple favors for people around her.

How can anyone take a film seriously that begins with a tourist jumping from the top of a building and falling on Amelie’s mom’s head, killing her instantly? Furthermore, the film is littered with inappropriate scenes that really serve no purpose in the movie except to embarrass moviegoers. Amelie is not even original; there is a character in the film called “Glass Man” who is quite obviously a total ripoff of Mr. Glass from M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable (2000). The film is like a really horrible version of Pay it Forward (2000), but less noble and with worse acting and directing. Never have two hours seemed as much like four hours in a theater; Lord of the Rings (2001), at nearly three hours, seems like a much shorter movie than Amelie because it is actually engaging, epic, visually stunning, and everything else that Amelie is not. For a truly great French film that critics have also praised and audiences are enjoying, see Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) and skip Amelie entirely.