It is sad that a great cast worked on a movie as profoundly boring and meaningless as Vatel. Whatever the goal of this movie was, it fails... Unless it was to present a good-looking, but meaningless film OR a movie with some of the worst dialogues ever seen in a serious movie and the kind of plot so thin that you have to work really hard to see it is indeed there. Vatel is a movie about, well... A man named Vatel that is for sure. But nothing much happens to him. Sure, there are a couple of moments where we should care for Gérard Depardieu's character, but the problem is that we never really cared about him. And we know he has to prepare a huge celebration for the king. But nobody cares! Why? Because we never got to know the characters very well. Even Tim Roth's character, which we should hate, stirs no emotion at all. His actions are kind of mean, but we don't care. OK, I said that I didn't care for much of this review but that is because Vatel is a movie where stuff sort of happens to cardboard figures which are there to try to fill our need for a character. These cardboards figures fail miserably. And even if the costumes are beautiful, and some of the sets stunning, the directing is not very good. In the end, Vatel bores, leaves the viewer unnafected and fades into it's memory. This movie is forgotten easily and is a pure waste of time. Still, some scenes are visually very impressive. That does not mean the movie is really any good. Sadly the great cast is lost and can't help much since the characters they portray have only one dimension and can't seem to say one line which makes much sense...
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