To paraphrase the old Irish Spring soap commercial (and thereby give away my age!), "Amelie may have been designed for women, but Ayyye like it, TOOO!" lol

I just saw it for the first time last night & was impressed. I hadn't heard a tremendous amount about it going in, so I wasn't underwhelmed by a huge build-up. (Jaws, when I was a kiddo, was the only one I really fell victim to. As a 12-year-old, NO movie could have lived up to what Jaws SOUNED LIKE it was going to be to me! lol As an adult, I came to appreciate it as a true classic.)

I would call Amelie one of 2001's best movies. Two of my other favs from that year are Lasse Hallstrom's The Shipping News & Wes Andersons's The Royal Tenenbaums. Amelie ranks right there with those two (and shares many stylistic similarities) and is miles away from the typcial Hollywood clone factory of today.

Is it a top 20 all-time film? Well ... I somehow doubt THAT ... but it is certainly one of the handful of top films of the early 2000's ... and may well remain in the decade's top 10 as the end of 2009 approaches.

MarkMyWord