Mr. Hulot's Holiday  sublimely amusing

Some comedians only joke, others make us think. Comedians such as Woody Allen and Charlie Chaplin take jokes to another level, seeking to inform or enlighten, as well as entertain. Falling within this tradition is the lesser known Jacques Tati, whose Mr. Hulot's Holiday  is playing this Saturday, sponsored by IFS.

Tati's humor is physical slapstick with little dialogue, harking back to silent film antics. The stunts which Mr. Hulot pulls are misplaced attempts to fit in among the other vacationers, whose behavior is also funny to watch. There is no normalcy, every character is neurotic, outrageously idiosyncratic or an exaggerated caricature. Mr. Hulot need look no farther than putting on his hat or taking a boating trip to find humor. Every action is an ordeal to be played out in time to the soundtrack, and seemingly everyday behavior becomes outlandish among the landscape of characters which Tati has created.

The most charming aspects of the movie are the details, the background characters whose behavior becomes funny simply through repetition. This seems to be the point of Tati's movie - that if you look "you will find more fun in everyday life than in fiction" (this is from the movie's prologue). Mundane actions become humorous when viewed with a sense of displacement through Tati's camera, and yet, none of the characters eccentricities are unrealistic.

Tati claims that "if you look hard enough you might even recogonize yourself" in his film, and he attempts to bring the audience to recognize the comedy in thier own day to day behavior. As in life, there is no plot, the viewer moves as aimlessly through Mr. Hulot's Holiday as the characters do. And this works - one views the characters without the context of a narrative structure, and finds humor strictly in their behavior. The random nature of Tati's comedy is so subtle that the movie lends itself easily to multiple viewings.

Perhaps that's a problem with this movie - it's entertaining, and enjoyable, but it takes getting aquatinted with. For those more used to the fast talking humor of the Marx Brothers, or the beautiful antics of Chaplin, Tati just doesn't take one to similar pants-wetting levels of laughter. Like life, it's funny and in some scenes bittersweet, but it's not a drop dead comedy. Not everyone will appreciate Tati's highbrow visual humor, and may seek a more tangible plot or character coherence in a movie.

The length of the film is the biggest problem, no matter how smart the humor is, there's only so much one can watch before losing interest. Mr. Hulot's Holiday is like a fine wine, it gets better with age, and is only truely enjoyable by those with the most subtle of tastes.

If you have nothing better to do this Saturday, you might be suprised to find a pleasantly quiet film, a slower paced, ingenious type of comedy. If your tastes in humor have been tainted by fast paced high antic slapstick, then this film might lose steam, but that certainly doesn't mean it doesn't have some hilarious moments.