5.5/10 Many people may not know that this is a remake of a French film that came out in 2011 called “The Intouchables”. Although this American remake is fine enough on its own, it really ills in comparison to the far superior original French film. The story is rather heartwarming in both films and the fact that it is true makes that fact even more emotional. It is hard to look at this film on its own without comparing it to the original. The only reason you should remake a film is if you think you can make it better but in this case, it was only to bring it to American audiences for profit. The original was better cast and Omar Sy, whom played the Kevin Hart character, is bilingual and they should have just cast him again in the same role for this remake. The original is funnier than this new one, despite this movie having a comedian as its co-lead. Like I said, this movie is fine. It gets the job done. You will laugh at a couple funny moments and emotionally feel for these characters. The use of opera music is used even better here than it was in the original. Some minor plot changes were put into this so it isn’t an exact copy of the original. That being said, even though this movie is serviceable and will entertain you, there is nothing extraordinary or great about it. Yet the original French film is really great. This movie, despite minor plot differences, takes way too much from the original, including the exact same opening flashback with the police. Some scenes are identical to the original and I wish that if you are going to remake a great film, at least make it different enough so that it can stand on its own. By having this be so similar to the superior original, it just means we compare the two and this movie will lose 100% of the time overall. Also, I think Nicole Kidman conveyed two different facial expressions in this entire movie, the major one being “resting bitch face”. It was really a waste of her talent. Kevin Hart’s character loves Aretha Franklin in this movie but in the original the same character loved Kool & the Gang and Earth, Wind & Fire. The original made much better use of that character’s musical choices than they do here. Overall, if you have not seen the original, this movie will amuse you and do its job but I highly recommend that everyone skip this movie and check out the much better “The Intouchables”. You won’t regret it.
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