While every scene is art-directed with zest and innovatively staged, The Fairy rarely inspires outright laughter. At least it respects its influences more than does "The Artist."
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Re-employing the tools of Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis, this pleasant fable reclaims artful slapstick with a bliss that's hard to deny.
Deadpan clownishness is The Fairy's raison d'être and its superior mode; when the lovey-doveyness turns cloying and the atrophied message-mongering creeps in, you wish the threesome knew when to keep their traps shut.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
The persistent whimsy gets a bit wearisome, but it's hard to dismiss any film so determined to make us happy.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
An alternately effortless and forced French-language diversion.
Deeply silly in a classic mode, The Fairy continues the French new wave of near-silent cinema.
For the most part, it's too dry and quirky to connect. Still, those gags are something.
The Fairy may be as close as we'll ever get to a live-action cartoon.
This is the third feature by the three gifted stars, who deftly pull off hilarious, nearly wordless slapstick routines reminiscent of Jacques Tati, Buster Keaton and Jerry Lewis.