100
CineVue
Playtime attacks the good taste of understanding by making you understand the importance of both absence and presence that coexists in a modern shared public space and a gradually disappearing private space.
PlayTime
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- France,
- Italy
- 1967
- · 115m
Director
Jacques Tati
Cast
Jacques Tati,
Barbara Dennek,
Rita Maiden,
France Rumilly,
France Delahalle,
Valérie Camille
Genre
Comedy
Attempting to meet with a business contact, the lovable, clumsy, and old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot finds himself perplexed by the intimidating complexity of a gadget-filled Paris, and soon becomes lost in the big city.
Stream PlayTime
What are critics saying?
100
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
In this landscape everyone is a tourist, but Tati suggests that once we can find one another, we all belong.
100
The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps
Tati's most elaborate film, Playtime stands as his masterpiece, an awe-inspiring work of intricate choreography with a heart to match its technical expertise.
100
Time Out by Dave Calhoun
French actor-filmmaker Jacques Tati’s 1967 masterpiece still holds up as a feast of subtle sight gags, playful noise and, above all, visual wonders.
100
Slant Magazine by Eric Henderson
With Playtime, Tati made one of the most fully inhabitable films ever.
100
San Francisco Chronicle by G. Allen Johnson
Playtime is sharp and colorful, and visually makes quite an impression.
100
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
Jacques Tati's most brilliant film, a bracing reminder in this all-too-lazy era that films can occasionally achieve the status of art.
100
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Instead of plot it has a cascade of incidents, instead of central characters it has a cast of hundreds, instead of being a comedy it is a wondrous act of observation. It occupies no genre and does not create a new one. It is a filmmaker showing us how his mind processes the world around him.
100
CineVue by D.W. Mault
Playtime attacks the good taste of understanding by making you understand the importance of both absence and presence that coexists in a modern shared public space and a gradually disappearing private space.
100
Little White Lies by David Jenkins
For my money it is the greatest film ever made.
100
Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr
The most visually inventive film of the 60s is also one of the funniest.
90
The New Yorker by Richard Brody
Emotions, identities, and even bodily functions are distorted by the mechanized uniformity, but Tati’s despair is modulated by a sense of wonder.
80
Variety
Tati is not an active satirist nor does he use slapstick. He has assimilated the greats but is an individual comic talent who builds meticulous gags founded on a gentle, anarchic individualism that is always sympathetic, personal and, above all, funny and constantly inventive.
Loading recommendations...
Loading recommendations...