5/5 A great romp!
  by Patrice Sicaud (Sebastopol, California)
A classic Tati. The subtitles are hardly necessary as the humor is always visual and the dialogue is very limited. Tati maintains a delicate balance between the outrageously funny and the subtle comedy. A great talent all around.

Similarly to "Jour de Fete", the humor is ageless even though the movie shows its age. One almost regrets, in this age of internet browsing, email connections and lightning-fast communications that the very archaic conditions that create the absurd scenes--witness the station fiasco--have actually gone away.
All in all, a great laugh.


3/5 Couldn't get into it as much as I thought I should have.
  by Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
M. Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953)

Do I need to offer a plot summary here? For the two or three of you who may have never heard of M. Hulot, all I should have to say is this: he was the inspiration for the modern character Mr. Bean. You should now have a basic outline of M. Hulot's Holiday, the film in which director Jacques Tati introduced his much-beloved, long-running character to movie fans. The travails Tati ran into making the film are legendary, and I wonder off and on how much of that plays into so many critics calling it one of the thousand, and even the hundred, best movies ever made. I have to say, I don't buy it's just for the movie alone, which is nothing more than a series of sight gags strung together in what is less a plot than it is a slice-of-life kind of movie. And given the enduring popularity of the Three Stooges and other such things, I can see where that sort of thing would still be popular enough that the Brits could re-tool Hulot and come up with Bean. In the end, however, I would have been so much happier with it had it had more holding the sight gags together. It's the same way I felt about A Day at the Races, and to much the same end. ***


5/5 Very sweet, funny movie
  by G. Misthos
I love this movie! Very clever, very sweet, very funny. And I love the song (How's the Weather in Paris?) that is repeated over and over throughout the movie--very catchy tune! But where is the French version that is 114 minutes long, vs. 87 minutes for this version??? I want to see the longer version!!!

5/5 I LAUGHED TIL I CRIED
  by Cinzia (North Carolina,USA)
I had never heard of this movie til it was shown on TV the other night. I haven't laughed that hard at a movie, continually almost, for a long, long time. It is so excellent. Right to my kind of off-beat taste. Now, I want to see Tati's other Mr. Hulot movies. I just loved the music that ran continually through this movie. The fact that it repeated the same music over and over added to the charm and hilarity. Yes, it was irritating at times, but I think that was the purpose of it. It is a "madhouse" of a movie. I wonder if Peter Sellers got some of his ideas from "Mr. Hulot." At any rate, I can't wait to see it again and again !

5/5 Oh, So Fun!
  by James E. Sanborn (Long Beach, CA)
In most movies dialogue is critical for understanding what is happening. Not so with Jacques Tati. Dialogue is secondary in all of his films. Tati requires that the viewer watch carefully to catch all that is happening. All of his films are a visual education. Mr. Hulot's Holiday is like a fine, subtle wine that only gets better over time.