This quirky, harmless comedy provides everything depressingly lacking in so many of its American equivalents: wits, charm and style. Director Laurent Tirard creates a story based on Petit Nicolas, a character from a beloved French book series. The young Maxime Godard in the leading role excels in embodying a boy growing up in a French family which expects a new member, and Nicolas takes it rather badly, mistaking the whole thing for a devious plot against him. What ensues is a series of wonderfully hilarious situations in which he's entangled with his friends, starting from the school and their stoic teacher, to pretending to have invented a magic potion. This exercise in intelligent comedy, which might just as well impress adults as well, proves there's so much that escapes our attention especially when it comes to Europe and its many different cinematographic cultures. Tirard certainly won my attention with this, as well as Maxime Godard.
Review of Little Nicholas
