If a French movie was sarcastically depicted in, say, The Simpsons, it would be this one. Starting with the title: "Paris". Kind of annoying if you happen to have seen "Inside Paris", "Paris Je T'Aime" and "Two Days in Paris" in the last 4 months. Well, I didn't expect much from this one and it still managed to disappoint me. A good director takes many stories and makes them converge into a convincing, well thought out plot. Here there are many stories, but they dissolve into Nothing, with a capital N. And way too many characters too, most of them thoroughly superficial and of no consequence at all. The movie is a succession of empty clichés about life ('seize the day') and about France (with the mandatory 'buy a baguette at the boulangerie' scene repeated ad nauseam) which slowly build up into an annoying and pretentious self-parody of a thoughtful movie. Juliette Binoche contributes her usual 'cow watching the train pass by' attitude and overall none of the characters inspire the least empathy. Actually, 5 minutes into the movie you couldn't care less what will or won't happen to them from there on. After an hour, nothing relevant has happened and you begin to wonder why you didn't say yes to that dinner party with your friends. Relief comes with the end titles, after 2h10 which feel like a teaser of Eternity. I'm not into car-chase and explosion movies, I do get my fix of Jim Jarmusch or Werner Herzog now and then. But this movie is definitely a must. A must-avoid. Trust me, you can do much better things with those 2 hours. I give it 3 points just because it's got decent music and interesting cameos of Paris. But all in all, forget it.
