The Artist -- movie review

The Artist

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius

I know this is popular, but I didn't care for it.  It was light entertainment.  I didn't find it challenging.  It is nostalgic, manipulative and sentimental.  A rather shallow love story going on against the background of the Depression and the transition from silent films to talkies.  What's good in this film are the dance sequences, especially toward the end.  Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  That showed a lot of skill and was really interesting to watch.  Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo are both good looking and have an imposing presence on the screen.  Jean Dujardin looks like Clark Gable and has a powerful physical attractiveness which no doubt the filmmakers were hoping to trade on.  The physical magnetism of the two lead actors probably accounts for most of the appeal of this film.  They've thrown everything in the kitchen sink into this film to make it popular.  A scruffy little dog saves a man from a burning building.  People love that kind of goofy stuff.  They should have made it into a cartoon.  And what?  A whole movie with no sex?  What's this world coming to?   In the end the loser man, doomed by his stubborn pride, is saved by the loyal, good hearted woman, who is willing to sacrifice herself to save the miserable wretch, -- although it's hard to tell why -- and she succeeds -- just barely, and just in the nick of time.  It is a triumph of market research.  I know I'm a grumpy old curmudgeon, but I don't care.  I found it tiresome.  Sorry, thumbs down.