IMDb plot summary: Monsieur Hulot curiously wanders around a high-tech Paris, paralleling a trip with a group of American tourists. Meanwhile, a nightclub/restaurant prepares its opening night, but it's still under construction.
Directed by Jacques Tati. Starring Jacques Tati, Barbara Dennek, Rita Maiden, and France Rumilly.
A few years ago I watched M. Hulot's Holiday as part of my very first movie challenge, and I didn't care for it at all. (To quote from that review: "What I ended up with was . . . seven slapstick gags, spaced out through an hour and a half movie, and interspersed with fifteen-minute scenes of people carrying around ice cream cones, setting up beach umbrellas, and quietly sitting drinking tea.") Tati's style of humor is *so* subtle and slice-of-life that it barely registers for me at all as comedy. Playtime appears to have just plopped a camera down in various businesses and let it run. I enjoy people watching, but if I'm going to people watch, I'll just go out and do that, I'm not going to watch a movie about people watching that hasn't even chosen the most interesting parts to show me.
1 star.
How it entered my Flickchart:
Playtime < 12 Monkeys
Playtime < Opening Night
Playtime > Chicken Little
Playtime > Man of Steel
Playtime < The Stepford Wives (2004)
Playtime < Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
Playtime < Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Playtime > How to Steal 2 Million
Playtime < The First Wives Club
Playtime < The Balloonatic
Playtime < 10 Items or Less
Playtime < The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Final spot: #2174 out of 2689.
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