The Intouchables · reception & legacy
2011 · Éric Toledano
How The Intouchables has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A colossal phenomenon in France — for years the second-most-watched French film ever at home and briefly the highest-grossing non-English-language film worldwide — but American critics were far cooler, with Variety infamously accusing it of recycling racial stereotypes. Audiences never blinked: it's since settled in as one of the most beloved crowd-pleasers on Letterboxd, critics be damned.
What's debated
The perennial fight: is it a genuinely warm story of friendship across class lines, or a schematic feel-good machine with a race problem — the audience-vs-critic gulf on this one is a canyon.
Its footprint
The Earth, Wind & Fire 'September' dance scene became the film's calling card, and Ludovico Einaudi's 'Una Mattina' piano theme escaped the film entirely into ads, montages, and study playlists; Hollywood remade it as The Upside with Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston.
Where it stands
A fixture of the 'highest-rated on Letterboxd' tier — the rare middlebrow crowd-pleaser cinephiles rate like a masterpiece, and often someone's gateway into French cinema.