Staying with the movie can be a bit of a challenge, and the humor is spread out and more subtle. But the craftsmanship behind this film can’t be questioned, and the sheer scope of the undertaking is incredible.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24, 2022

Another genius movie that made the foibles of everyday existence into grand set pieces...

| May 9, 2022

This kind of film exists on a level all its own.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 14, 2022

There is not a written description of the film that would ever begin to do it justice, but it happens to be one of those rare, supremely unique and utterly mind boggling examples of cinematic possibilities.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 3, 2020

An even more remarkable Rube Goldbergian contraption of visual comedy that turns all Paris into an ultramodern advertisement for itself. Its brilliance requires almost no dialogue...

| Nov 3, 2020

The sheer complexity of each scene must have taken a tremendous amount of coordination and planning, and yet it feels so alive.

| Jul 17, 2020

Playtime, [Jacques Tati's] masterpiece, is a work of brow-furrowing complexity in its design and structure, but a model of narrative clarity.

| Mar 27, 2020

The whimsical comedy of coincidence and confusion is a delight.

| Dec 17, 2019

[Tati's] most recent films, at least for me, have had the effect of seeming endless and pointless, interspersed with four or five bits that are not only choice but even classic.

| Oct 2, 2019

[Tati's] unparalleled mise-en-scene stuffs the frame with enough energy to save a Paris power outage.

| Jun 11, 2019

Playtime is fairly described as a masterpiece of slapstick comedy, but the more I see it, the more I feel it's a 124 minute nightmare of modern life.

| Aug 28, 2018

Playtime is not a Hulot excursion but a lengthy look at the Americanised Paris of le drugstore and le parking-with, Tati being Tati.

| Jul 11, 2018

... an accumulation of minor touches, little dissonances, imaginative observations, and pieces of creative business: hundreds of details that erupt with lives of their own but fit together like a clockwork mechanism with a human heartbeat.

| Jan 13, 2017

Tati's despair is modulated by a sense of wonder.

| Mar 2, 2015

Jacques Tati's Playtime is an astringent antidote to Paris movies that are as sickly as macaroons and stuffed with views of the Eiffel Tower by night.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 7, 2014

It took Jacques Tati close to ten years to realise his greatest achievement, but it left him virtually broke. No wonder.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 7, 2014

For my money Playtime is the greatest film ever made.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 6, 2014

Jacques Tati's 1967 masterpiece still holds up as a feast of subtle sight gags, playful noise and, above all, visual wonders.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 4, 2014

PlayTime is a work of unparalleled genius.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 3, 2014

For all the overweening ambition there's an intimate charm about it ...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 3, 2014