THE INTOUCHABLES (R) The smash French hit The Intouchables shouldn't work. The plot is formulaic and sentimental in the Hollywood tradition of things like Driving Miss Daisy, The Blind Side and The Help. It's also, on the surface, patronizing and racist. A wealthy white Parisian quadriplegic, Philippe (François Cluzet), gets a new caretaker, the brash and street-smart African immigrant Driss (Omar Sy). Driss is careless and impulsive. He has spent time in jail and he leeches off the state for benefits. Philippe is imprisoned in his own body, but he's also isolated from real life on the streets of Paris, especially from the depressing poverty-stricken tenements where Driss comes from. Despite the odds, Driss learns responsibility and gains genuine self-worth beneath his arrogant posturing. Philippe learns to embrace life in a more adventurous manner. The stiff white man teaches the black man that there's life beyond the ghetto. The black man teaches the white man how to dance!

Yet, Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, who both wrote and directed the movie, don't wallow in those stereotypes. The Intouchables is that saccharine feel-good cinematic beast in design, but it consistently deviates from movies like The Blind Side (and the others mentioned above) in how it makes Driss the real main character. Superficially, he does inhabit the horrid role of black person as savior, but he also subtly has agency in the movie in a way that similar characters don't have in The Help and others. Driss is also more fleshed out as a character than Philippe, who embodies the more abstract and archetypal wise father figure role. No doubt, in the inevitable Hollywood remake Driss' character will be put back in his place and Philippe's backstory expanded.

There's a lot of class tension in the movie as well, but that's not what makes The Intouchables ultimately interesting or enjoyable. Simply, the movie's success rests on the enormous charisma of its two leads and their easygoing way with one another. Cluzet is one of France's best actors—he's probably best known over here for his performance in the 2006 thriller Tell No One—and his chemistry with the relatively unknown Sy (he was in Micmacs) always feels genuine. Movies like this aren’t plot-driven affairs. It's all about character, humor and the warmth we get from their interaction. In that respect, The Intouchables couldn't get any better. The rest of it is pure fairytale.