Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

siderite The film starts with the tired idea of the noble savages: far away on their pristine planet, an agrarian society, that lives in harmony with itself and nature and has people with mental powers, decides it is time to send people on Earth, just because they haven't done it in 200 years. It's just that no one wants to go. Earth is stupid and ugly and corrupt. Yet, one of them wants to go, a woman who has heard her mother was actually from Earth. And she comes, teleported by the mental powers of her peers, only to scorn everything, from the polluted air to the dirty water, from the eating of meat to the concept of money. It goes like this until the very end, where the film just ends. What I found insulting is that, under the guise of well intended ignorance, the alien woman wreaks havoc with everything and everybody around her, from mental rapes to breaking technology, just because "it's bad for us". Yet she and her society prove again and again that they are very capable of doing the very things that they scorn at the beginning. Her sons soon join her, for the single reason of getting beautiful Earth girls. They quickly learn to drive a car and listen to music, then have fun making two football teams in a large match start dancing and kissing each other, or professional concert players do random interpretations of rock music. When they return, they take a rock CD, after explaining how great their "concerts of silence" are. I managed to see the film through just because I expected it to end with a great reveal, a satire of the satire, to prove that having double standards and being arrogant about your own culture to the point where you can just violate another was the whole joke. Alas, the film took itself seriously to the end. Imagine a vegetarian with the mental power to "disconnect" you, whenever you feel like eating pork. It's like that the entire movie.

Wig Krullebol Lali Rao, wrote in an earlier comment : " ... An important role in this film is played by Colline Serreau who is effective as Mila ..." Filmmaker = main actor. This is a very intrinsic "detail". ;-) This is a brilliant 100% situational-observational comedy, where I feel at every corner the leading example of the great master in this kind of universally not much used type of humour: I'm talking about Jaques Tati. Here, I feel the female reincarnation of mister Tati. And it's also reflected in that simple fact, Colline plays her own film, just as Jaques has done, ever since he started standing behind and in front of the camera at the same time. Of course, there is zero copy of 'style' involved. It's rather a splendid continuation of a unique manner of working and of building humour out of the observation of daily reality, through eyes that give it a unique turn. THAT, is it ! But, YES, it would be better you understand french. By translating, part of the soul is killed, because those translators don't understand the product, and the product is very french ! The biggest mistake from Anglosaxon's is always looking for "morality", "higher messages", etc... if it's not full slapstick to remind them of so called humour. Laughing can be both refined and more intellectual referenced. That's what Tati learned us. Observe closely, and the COMIC already jumps onto you, from every situation in daily life. Colline Serrau understood this lesson from "the master". ;-) ( And YES, I write humour as humour, not as humor, as this site's spelling checker wants me to do. Because I'm European, and stick to "English". Beg me pardon, Americans... ;-) )

guigarel I saw this film at the theater in 1996 and I just loved it. But I never watch it again until today and I was not disappointed as I feared: This movie is as Wonderful as I remembered it! I think this movie is excellent but that most of the people find it disturbing. And it is (!!) as it's about the stupidity of our world!! And people don't want to know how stupid they are, how they live their lives, closed in in their comfort and habits. But if you're not like this, you will just love this movie as it is pure genius. The whole film is very well done, with beautiful pictures, good acting and it's very funny. It's just the scene of the football match that I think was a little too much and off the subject. Otherwise Coline Serreau offer us a perfect movie: smart, funny, beautiful and touching.

funkeltropfen I'll write this comment as a response to another one. First: "ET's all white and clean-cut": this is not automatically racist. This green planet is shown like a paradise, all right, but it is not shown as the only way to live right. "Sur les autres planètes, ils nous apprennent des choses!" - ("On the other planets, they teach us stuff!") says one of the Green-Planet-people. So, they are not perfect! Also, they are saying that they have no problems because they only have ONE race on their planet. They are not saying that it is a BETTER race. They even explain the development of the Earth as "the most degenerated having the power" (and you honestly cannot say anyone else than the Whites are meant because humanity started to develop in Africa and I wouldn't say the colored people have the mass of the power on Earth.) Later, the sons of Mila, the main character, talk to her about Aborigines: "They are beautiful! All black!" Also, the Aborigines are represented as the only people on Earth known to the Green-Planet-People who are as developed as they are, not destroying nature, knowing to do telepathy etc. Yes, white people living in a paradise and making fun of humans on Earth - but making fun only of the WHITE people on Earth. So much for "fascist" or "racist". No work- simply not true. They live as farmers and farmers have to do farm work, as shown later on in the film.No music - A CD with Elvis Presley music is brought to the people of the Green Planet, and they dance to it. Also, there has been music there in former times. This is perhaps what the Green Planet can still learn from the Earth. No arts- well, you can say that you are bored without any arts, but those people are represented as having a very colorful life in their heads, and so many abilities with their heads - perhaps they don't need this. Or they can still learn to make visual arts, like learning to make music again. Nobody is telling you in the film that the arts are bad. Also, who knows what is happening on the other planets? Perhaps they have arts?One of them is forced to go to Earth - oh come on. I could write the whole dialog down where Mila says she wants to go to Earth. Her sons try to keep her back and say "Mama, you're all right?" They are definitely not forcing her. Finally, the head woman asks here: "Mila, are you going or not?" and she says yes. That's it. Do you know why they scramble the brain of some guys? Not to make it all 100 percent right. In the assembly of the Green Planet, before, they discussed that one can't make a whole population jump stages and stages of mental development, like "pulling on a salad won't make it grow." The head woman of the assembly says:" But we can put something on it" and that is what this "brain-scrambling" is. They are attempting to make something better, but they can't change everything. What do you mean by saying "nothing gets any better?" You talk as if the Green-Planet-People had to make things better in terms of their paradise, and immediately, please. Don't forget that the film shows at the most some WEEKS of Mila and her sons on Earth. Wanna change the Earth in weeks? They make the people around them THINK and change little ways of being. That's already much. They tell of their planet and they will come back. The Earth will not continue to be deserted of the "ET"s! And they're not messing everything up. Some mechanical devices like automates and two, three computers mess up, and a whole football match becomes a hilarious waltz dance - but this is really not the way a terrorist works to mess the Earth up. To say it short - it doesn't hurt and it makes spectators laugh. If you didn't laugh, fine. But let the others laugh. To the football match again: maybe the fun of the people watching it is spoiled, but you certainly have fun watching it at home in front of your TV, and they don't DIE or anything. Also, the thing is not just to annoy people, but to make them think, again. Their fun could be spoiled when the game is boring. So what? They would hang in their seats and think: "Oh, I'd rather be home now." The way their "fun was spoiled" in the film, the masses rushed to the front, rushed in crowds from their seats, it wasn't clear what their emotions were, but they were certainly curious. Finally, the people playing the football match certainly had fun in the film reality. You don't get so often to kiss someone passionately on a football lawn while the judge is taking a shower on the same lawn and your whole team is dancing. Finally: There are very few special effects, but there are some. Or can I go to your house and rent a white bubble with which to travel to the green planet? I promise I won't take you with me :-)