Coco (2009)

Please don't spend money on this.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

For everyone that knows a little bit about french and Moroccan culture, this movie is INCREDIBLY FUNNY! I spent the whole movie laughing. It's amazing how they created such a charming and funny character (Gad Elmaleh), that is a caricature of the Moroccan millionaire, who lives in Paris and try to be part of the Parisian snobbish and pallid hight society, without losing his essence. I absolutely loved this movie! It's real, it's simple, unpretentious and it shows two different cultures through characters that are precise stereotypes. I strongly recommend to everyone that is not a sad 'intellectual', that likes depressive movies, with depressive characters, that only sees negative things about life. This movie is for those who are happy, optimist and prefer laugh than cry!

Yes I agree with the two other comments it is indeed not a good movie.I have laugh twice during the movie, and without noticing the movie.However, french cinema is far from dead like any countries very good and very bad movies come out. There are tonnes of good french movies that came out recently! Gad Elmaleh is one of the funniest comedians on stage, my favourite by far. Anyone that speaks fluent french should watch his shows they are amazing, I laugh all the way. This is why I took the risk to watch this movie beside disappointing critics, and they were right it is not a good movie and it is definitely not funny.*** happens I am sure Gad will be the first one to admit that he did not do a great job with this one. I still have hopes for him!

I was really excited to watch this. Gad Elmaleh is quiet possibly my favorite stand-up comedian. He's unfortunately not that well (quasi not known at all) outside France, or maybe other French-speaking countries, and I would not like at all this film to introduce him to other countries, since this is an extremely mediocre work from one of the funniest people alive.Gad Elmaleh writes, directs and acts, and I thought oh well...that's brilliant! That never happened, he only did acting before, and now he'll have the whole film under control, and this is going to be great! I was immensely disappointed.This is, unfortunately, the kind of comedy where it's enough to watch the trailer, because there is nothing more really in the film. I nearly turned the film off after half an hour, since I only smiled a few times, and hey, there is a bit of comedy in every film nowadays, even horror films.... so that means I wouldn't have realized that it was a comedy if I didn't know about it beforehand. Fortunately after the first 30 minutes the film gets better. There will be a few 'gentle' laughs, but nothing compared to to his stand-up acts where I was crying from laughter. Interestingly enough enough there is a part where he uses one of his funniest and most famous sentence from one of his stand-up shows...and it just doesn't work, which shows that the whole thing is far from that very best Gad Elmaleh can do.Secondly, maybe less important, but extremely annoying is the terrible editing. It's the problem throughout the whole film: in one shot the hand is up, in the next one it's down. Sometimes they could even change their hair style in the split second. I believe the reason for this is a rushed post-production, but anyways it's there, it can be noticed and it's extremely annoying. The truth is that the film doesn't know what it wants to be: at the same time it's a drama about family, friendship, success and a comedy. The problem is that the dramatic part, although pretty decent considering that this is Elmaleh's first film, is still unoriginal with no particular surprises. As for the comedy part, just read again the third paragraph. So what is there left? A film that is just flat, with too many uninteresting parts. The only thing that kept me watching was Elmaleh himself, and only because in every scene of his I said to myself: "I know this guy. He's usually extremely funny. I'll wait, there sure will be hilarious moments". And I waited for 90 minutes and nothing happened. Elmaleh is very very far from his best, and if you do not know who he is, then I don't think you should even start considering watching this film.

The truth may be hard to cope with, but... Coco is a drama. If you're a genuine movie-lover it is impossible not to shed a tear (or buckets of tears) when you watch this "opus". The plot is non existent, the directing is non existent and the acting is even worse. Some may argue that Gad Elmaleh wanted the audience to laugh. I don't think so. This man has got talent and it's impossible to admit that anything may be funny in this film. Let me tell you the truth... Mr Elmaleh is sick of the cinema industry, so he has made a movie which is a statement about the state of dereliction of the filmmakers in France. He wanted us to cry about that long lost past, when French films were done by people like Renoir, Prevert, Truffeau etc. Today, we must be aware of this very sad reality: French cinema is dead. Thank you Mr Elmaleh for this ultimate proof of yours. From now on we will mourn our "Paradis Perdu".