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Excellent adaptation.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It was a summary of the book with more than one wrong dialogs and made the whole case feel somehow unimportant. After reading the book I burst into tears, after the film though I felt absolutely nothing. Don't watch it if you have read it for those who haven't read it could be a quite nice little film but actually it has nothing to do with the book's perfection. While in the book you get the feeling of warmth and affection between all the four characters and get the anger and dislike of Frank and Camille transforming to love gradually and in an interesting way the film doesn't offer you any of that,plus it doesn't contain many interesting details concerning the former lives of all the characters. Their feelings are changed and their characteristics are not that similar. I'd say that someone who hasn't read it may find it interesting but I found it rather disappointing.

The good:Excellent actor performance concerning 3 of the 4 main actors. Aurelie Tautou was just good but not excellent. - The people in the story are kind of sympathetic.The bad:Everything else. First, when I watch a movie, I don't want to think about how the movie is done. About, is the acting is good. I just want to enter into the movie. Live the experience with the people I see. Or if you want to make a movie in order to think to something, just do a dreaming-like movie à la David Lynch.The realization of this movie is simply horrible. When you watch this movie, you think about the camera movement. Terrible as in bad TV french series with small budget. Actors: Main actor are very good. But for almost each second role, the acting is just plain bad. In the first 10 minutes of the movies, I noticed at least two actors (second role) that were very _bad_. I believe I am a very nice public. Even mid-good actor can make the trick with me. But, this time it was like: we play like if we were in a theater not in real life nor movie. May be this impression is only in VO (French).Concerning the story: I don't dislike slow movies in general. I love Japanese very long movies where nothing occurs for 1 minutes on the screen. But when this kind of thing occurs in slow movies, in general this is for a good reason. There is a "hidden" message or at least a stunning view. In this movie, there is nothing like that. The number of scene that could be trashed is simply enormous.But this one was just completely boring. There is no plot. This is not a joke. There really is no surprise in the entire movie. No "action", no changing "event". The most vivid moment of the entire movie is when Camille (Aurelie Tautou) drop a radio by a window because she is angry. The rest of the story, is something you can see every day.The message: "Socialize and you will live better". OK, I get it. I didn't need a complete movie with this only one message.In conclusion:If I was alone, I wouldn't have watched this movie until the end. Even if the character are attaching and the actors are excellent, this is just not enough to save this movie. There are so many realization errors that I was "pop out" of this movie too much.

I liked this film. The French formula for romantic comedy doesn't depend on the characters being rich, young and handsome, an opulent setting , and no old people (except for very minor characters). French directors find romance in the humbler areas of Paris as well as the flashier parts. Camille (Audrey Tautou), an art school dropout, works as a cleaner, or "surface engineer" as she likes to be called. She lives in a garret in the same old apartment building as Philibert (Laurent Stocker), who is young and good-looking, but is the French equivalent of a dim gentleman. Philibert sells postcards for a living. Notwithstanding a stutter, he aspires to a career on the stage. He shares his rather grand but dowdy apartment, his grandmother's former home, with the gruff Franck (Guillaume Canet), a womanizing chef. Franck is pre-occupied with looking after his elderly grandmother Paulette (Francoise Bertin), who is hospitalized after a fall. When Camille falls ill Philibert invites Camille to convalesce at his place. Soon she is striking sparks off grumpy old Franck.Philibert isn't gay; it's just that his romantic interests lie elsewhere. It is Pauline who draws Franck and Camille together. The French title "Ensemble C'est Tout" ("Together, That's All") says it all, really. (I haven't a clue what this film has to do with hunting and gathering).Audrey Tautou has just about got the market for sexy French waifs sewn up. I've seen her in several other films and her performances are similar. Guillaume Canet lets us see his gruff chef's soft side and Francoise Bertin also evokes sympathy for someone made tiresome by old age. The part of Philibert's love interest Aurelia is severely truncated (the result of putting a 600 page novel into 100 minutes of film). This also tends to sideline Philibert later in the film.I very much liked Jean de Floriet and Manon des Sources, directed by Claude Berri 20 years ago (two other literary adaptations). He is a very conservative, straightforward director, but he can produce some very vivid work. One very touching scene here is when Philibert goes to a speech therapist to cure his stutter. The therapist, Phillipe van Eeckhout, is one in real life and treated Berri after a recent stroke damaged his speaking ability.So, we have no glamorous stars (though Audrey Tautou is big in France) and no shimmering background. But it's a warm-hearted story with some real emotion and, dare I say it, a happy ending. And here's something for the nit-pickers. Franck would never have got to London from the Gare du Lyon (except via the connecting suburban RER line). Paris - London trains leave from the magnificent Gare du Nord. But who cares?

Claude Berri's most disappointing movie to date. Perhaps Claude is surrounded by too many 'yes' people to take a truly objective look at his efforts. How some critics could extrapolate any glowing positives from such a tepid offering truly indicates that a career in film critique is available to just about anyone. Remarkably ALL the characters lacked an ounce of charisma (quite an achievement in itself),with the result that 60 minutes into the movie you really could not care where the thinnest of plots was heading. Quite sad to say that even the normally beguiling Miss Tautou could not provide a sufficient distraction either - perhaps the 'Da Vinci Code' has momentarily upset her ability to distinguish turkeys from true quality.