With A Friend Like Harry

Rating:
Summary: Typical Noirish dreck
Review: As a good friend of mine once said "just because it is in a foreign language doesn't mean it's good". He said this to me due to my everpresent need to see the latest foreign film released in the U.S. I thought that this film would be one of a few lone bright spots in a horrid summer of movie watching but it was just a bad as any hollywood thriller. The film wasn't poorly made so much as it was like any film student's script. The elements for a winner were present. The idea of the friend from college becoming obssesed, and the novel needing to be written, these had the trappings of a true and unique film but fell terribly short of the mark, digressing into common b-movie techniques to portray... what? The same thing you could see in any American film in the same genre.
Certianly a pass.

Rating:
Summary: european are doing good!
Review: Hello to all hollywood people. Here in Europe in the next future we will get back to our splendide age of creativity.
I seen the movie Harry un ami qui vous veut du bien, it is brilliant and actors are very good.
It is a psychological thriller about the inner world of a man, (and it is hard to understand what is happening for real and what not), is a movie who talks about the influences that can mine our lifes and make us die slowly.
I suggest this item to any lover of good cinema.

Rating:
Summary: .. who needs enemies?
Review: Clearly released in the USA with a different title (in the UK it's "Harry, he's here to help"), this film was the best French film of 2000. The blackest of comedies, it's understated, stylish, and brilliant. What's it about? If one begins to explain the plot, one will spoil the film. Just buy it and be completely absorbed for a couple of hours. Then thank your lucky stars that you don't know Harry, or anyone like him. Or do you...?

Rating:
Summary: You Must See This Movie
Review: Dominik Moll's taut, sardonic thriller begins quite simply.
In the men's room of a gas filling station, Michael (Laurent Lucas) finds himself reacquainted with Harry (Sergi Lopez), a high school chum he hasn't seen in years.
They chat. They talk about the good old days.
Eventually, Harry ends up at Michael's country house.
Big mistake.
What follows is a slick, intense study of the male psyche filled with murderous impulses, hints of homosexualty, psychotic obsessions, stalking, bloodshed, nudity, razor-sharp dialogue and a surprise ending guaranteed to knock your socks off.
And all because Harry decides the time has come to free Michael from domestic shackles which include a nagging wife, two screaming kids, a deceitful brother and two meddlesome parents.
On the big screen, "With a Friend Like Harry" sizzled. On DVD, the result is the same. The only difference: You can hit the reply button every now and then, particularly when you think "Wait a minute! Did what just happen really happen?"

Rating:
Summary: A truly suspenseful movie
Review: In a world of cookie-cutter suspense movies such as "What lies Beneath" it's truly refreshing to see a truly original, creepy, terrifying suspense movie. Sergi Lopez is amazing as Harry, a "lost childhood friend" who basically invades the life of his friend and his family. At first Harry seems friendly and harmless enough...but is he? This is a truly wonderful film that takes its time to build up, but the payoff is well worth it.
The DVD is amazingly weak in terms of extra material. It would have been great to have an audio commentary or at the very least a theatrical trailer.

Rating:
Summary: Great Foreign Thrill Film
Review: With a Friend Like Harry... is exceptionaly good picture. It is in French with English sub-titles. It is a mix between a thriller, a comedy, a drama, and also has other elements. It is about a man with his wife and his 3 young duaghters who are driving to their summer house. At a pitstop, the man, Michael, sees an old college friend named Harry(played by the extremely talented Segie Lopez). Harry and his girlfriend end up tagging along to the summer house, and Harry goes out of his was numerous times to please Michael. Michael starts to have conflicts and gets unhappy, which of coarse is not a good thing because Harry will go over the edge to be a good friend.

This is a very good and entertaining movie. I highly recommend it!

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable film
Review: This film is worth the price of the DVD or the VHS. It is clever, very French, and fun. It is nice to get away from the Hollywood scence from time to time, but this one gets away while amusing us.

Rating:
Summary: Tension - and how it's done well.
Review: Harry. What a guy that Harry is. And eggs. I want an egg right now.

But yes, the movie. Nicely done little french movie. Everyone seems to be descrbing it as a HITCHCOCKish film, and I guess they're not all wrong. It's a well paced little thriller with a vein of black comedy. Like Hitch.

And as a friend told me to watch for, tension was used very well in this movie. From the opening scene in the car with the kids going nuts, to the scene in the bathroom when we first meet Harry, the tension created is just a joy to watch. A good tone remains also throughout the entire moive.

And the end I thought was one of the best I've seen in a long time. The implications it made marveled me. That was something I wasn't expecting. That the whole point of the movie was that Harry actually HELPS Michel was, I thought, just great. And to end the movie just how it started, in the car, on the road, but the POLAR opposite; ....

The only bad thing about this is that it's a little slow and twenty minutes or so before the very end, are a little extraneous I think. But still, definitely check it out.

Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: Quel film!

This film is full of social commentary (as another reviewer failed to realize). Everything these days is, "follow your dreams," or, "go where your heart takes you." This film shows what happens when one actually does those things. Sure it's a movie (things typically used for entertainment), but it's making a much larger point, which is this: maybe it is better to be tied down, but to have reason and compassion, than to be completely free yet so caught up in that freedom that you become completely irrational.

Though the film tackles an important and relevant issue, as we all must balance responsibility and freedom in our lives, it does so in a way that isn't too heavy. All of the meaning is woven masterfully into a beautiful piece of cinema. I would certainly recommend this film to everyone.

Rating:
Summary: I really, really, really wanted to like this movie.
Review: After listening to an interview with the director on National Public Radio, I could not wait to see this movie. The film had apparently taken home much of the hardware awarded at the "French Oscars" last year, and Mr. Moll described his film as being equal parts thriller, black comedy, and social commentary. I understood that the movie was French, but figured this wouldn't be a problem since Mr. Moll quite readily admits that he was born in Germany, which certainly cannot be blamed for France's precipitous decline in cultural taste; it's been over fifty years since Germany has occupied France, but I digress.

I usually consider any film of french origin somewhat suspect due in no small part to the country's fascination with Jerry Lewis. But the interview with Mr. Moll had truly swayed me, so I collected up my two grown sons and my wife and made the fifty-mile trek to the art house movie theater that was showing the film.

Right away, let me just say that "With a Friend Like Harry" is an absolute piece of rubbish. There wasn't enough plot in this film from which to build a substandard episode of NYPD Blue, an American TV series I've stopped watching because even the best episodes aren't all that great. Let me assure the reader that I've seen foreign movies, I like foreign movies, foreign movies are friends of mine ... For example, I loved Belle Epoque (Spanish), All About My Mother (again, Spanish) Il Postino, and Mediterraneo (both Italian), etc.

With a Friend Like Harry doesn't make you laugh. It isn't a black comedy. Nothing funny happens, and the stabs at humor fall flat. (By the way, my use of the word stabs here is a comical reference to the plot of the movie. French moviemakers take note ...)

It certainly isn't a thriller. We know very early on what Harry is up to, and the movie is just a long, slow predictable road of discovery for the husband. Unfortunately, we the viewers have paid to watch it, which hardly seems fair, in retrospect.

I guess that only leaves social commentary. Uh, "some peoples' morals are different than others?" Is that the social commentary? I don't think so. And the movie certainly doesn't even pretend to say anything else. So it fails as social commentary as well.

Now here's the weird part. At the end, they tie up everything with a nice bow and the husband and his immediate family escape unscathed, while the husband's murder of Harry is successfully covered up. So essentially, we have a bad french movie that reaches out at the end and finds the "Hollywood Ending" that so many European filmmakers (and fans) are so eager to disdain. What's the deal with that?

So there you have it. Every single member of my family hated this film. I'm in the doghouse now. It took me years of work to get my family to stop ridiculing me for making them watch the Michael Palin film, "A Private Function." Now all that work has been erased by this French piece of trash. Oh the horror!

My review is clearly very much at odds with most of the reviews of this film. This is because I am a fan of good films; not just a fan of foreign films. I don't give films extra credit for simply being made outside of Hollywood. That would be wrong.

I suggest that you wait until this film appears on the Sundance Channel or IFC, or at best until you can rent it for a couple of bucks. Watch it. You'll thank me for the money you saved.

Cheers!