Mr. Hulot's Holiday Reviews

I can’t believe it took me about 20 years to finally see another movie directed by Jacques Tati. To be honest, at the time, I actually didn’t care much for ‘Jour de fête’ but maybe it was because I had such huge expectations. Anyway, with this 2^nd attempt, even though I did like it and even though it’s supposed to be be Tati’s best directing effort, I thought it was pretty good but still nothing really mind-blowing. I mean, sure, the whole thing was really sweet and clever but it was never really interesting or seriously entertaining.  It is pretty obvious that Tati was some kind of French version of Charles Chaplin but the big difference was that Chaplin put so much poetry, drama in his stories and his characters, even if they were completely silent, were so much more developed than here.  Indeed,  Tati never really allows you to care about Hulot or the different characters involved and, as a result, I had a hard time to really care about what they were going through. Still, in contrary to ‘Jour de fête’ which I saw when I was a teenager, I was able to appreciate the tone delivered by Tati and the damned thing was also a great time capsule showing how it must have been to go on holiday in France back in the 50’s. Finally, it was pretty neat to see that this character was an obvious inspiration for Rowan Atkinson when he created his Mr. Bean. To conclude, even if it didn’t really dazzle me away, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.