Little Nicholas (2009)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Blistering performances.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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."

This is a very entertaining movie.Loved the opening credits were very creative. Kids looked adorably innocent when they are discussing about grave issues, which are actually mostly imaginary.Looks like the movie was made from real incidents or observations.The potion looked very similar to something I had made during school days, when I got hooked in Chemistry . Characters were well made, consistent and well played.Streets in France looks so beautiful.The beauty of the movie comes from its close resemblance to real life. Scenes of the medical check up, parallel parking, boss visiting the house were hilarious. Good background music too.Well crafted by creative minds,and great story.

It's not too difficult to see why this carried all before it at the French Box Office in 2009 and an uncredited cameo by Gerard Junot in a sly dig at/nod to his own multi-award winner Le Chorus is only frosting on a wonderful celebratory cake designed to appeal to both les enfants and les parents, a concoction in which Alain Chabat, the multi-talented and highly accomplished actor-writer-director had an authorial hand, one of five that prove that too many cooks don't always spoil the broth. The source material although beloved in France is almost totally unknown in England but the ensemble playing by the kids plus a great trio of adults - Valerie Lemercier, Kad Merad and Sandrine Kiberlain, playing her second school teacher on the bounce - render this academic. Nor need the plot - despite being secure in the love of his parents and friends Nicholas convinces himself that his parents are trying for another child that will eclipse him - detain us unduly. This is a film of observation and the observation is spot on. Roll on the DVD.

French people might understandably be disappointed by a theatrical adaptation of the beloved Petit Nicolas, a character so familiar from their childhoods, but as one who was never mesmerized by the original form of these character, I did not go into this with expectations.But it's a fun little ride. The costumes, the décor and the acting are all impeccable--Valérie Lemercier is especially delightful. So, too, is the writing: the story is predictable, tidy, socially non-offensive and slightly fantastical--but self-consciously so. It is a tribute to and a mild, good-natured parody of 1950's aesthetic and moral values in filmmaking, and it works very well. Most contemporary period films delight in opening up the curtains on the skeletons of what they see as "repressed" past societies and in poisoning our sentimental collective memories with gritty filth (see « 8 femmes » for an excellent French example; "Titanic" for a classic Anglo-American textbook example).« Le petit Nicolas » is just here to remind us of what we were once supposed to try for--and it makes us wonder if it wasn't in some ways better than what we have ended up with... without, of course, being too moralizing. It makes for a good little weekday evening pick-me-up.