Having only recently emerged from childhood, but not recently enough to have forgotten it, I can say with credence that Laurent Tirard's slightly absurdist, deliriously comic adaptation of Rene Goscinny's "Le Petit Nicolas" books knocks Richard Linklater's unnecessarily dreary and pointless Oscar-excuse out of the park and into the poubelle where it belongs. Unlike Boyhood, Le Petit Nicolas finds - a decidedly comical - joy in childhood, reveling in naivety and innocence with appropriately childlike delight.
Le Petit Nicolas follows a young boy, Nicolas, as he interacts with his friends and family. When he discovers that his parents are going to have a child, and to his horror, that such a development could mean his expulsion from his home, he and his friends set out on a quest to hire a gangster to kidnap the baby and leave it in a jungle. The film bounds from hilarious misadventures to surprisingly dark coincidence with gorgeous fluidity. The story is told well enough to charge every frame with purpose, and even the comedy has a certain universality about it that will render the film irresistible to any age.
It's no emotional tour de force, or even as funny as I would like to say it is, but I consider it one of the most true depictions of childhood I have ever seen on film. In other words, "oui, c'est bon."
Le Petit Nicolas follows a young boy, Nicolas, as he interacts with his friends and family. When he discovers that his parents are going to have a child, and to his horror, that such a development could mean his expulsion from his home, he and his friends set out on a quest to hire a gangster to kidnap the baby and leave it in a jungle. The film bounds from hilarious misadventures to surprisingly dark coincidence with gorgeous fluidity. The story is told well enough to charge every frame with purpose, and even the comedy has a certain universality about it that will render the film irresistible to any age.
It's no emotional tour de force, or even as funny as I would like to say it is, but I consider it one of the most true depictions of childhood I have ever seen on film. In other words, "oui, c'est bon."