Gamer (2001) User Reviews

You've seen it before - just not in French

[Wizard-8 · 12 April 2002]

I can imagine the way this movie got made was when someone with the production exclaimed, "Hey! Let's exploit the video game market! We'll sucker in teenage gameheads this way! We can make the movie seem hip by naming and showing shots of a lot of video games - that's cheap, and we'll probably get a lot of bucks from the product plugs! We'll also save a lot of money by shooting on location and at an actual video game festival instead of building our own. Oh, we'll spend a few bucks on some computer graphics, but only a few minutes worth - we can show clips from it in the trailers, and make the teens think the movie is all like that! And who cares if the computer-generated scenes are simply gratuitous flash? Who also cares if the final video game sequence couldn't possibly be believable as a video game? Oh, and the story? Well, we'll steal a bit from HACKERS - that's a Hollywood movie, so it must be good! We'll mainly steal the old story of the heartless corporation screwing over the little guy, with the little guy teaming up with his eccentric youthful friends to fight back and get revenge as well as fame and fortune! Though since it's familiar, I guess we'll have to make the main character so stupid that he signs a contract without reading it, and only makes one copy of a demo game! Other than that, all the standard cliches will be there! Plus, we'll make all the youthful heros annoying, because hey, youths are annoying, right? We'll speak their language, and make a fortune!"

From what I gather, GAMER didn't do much at the French box office. If you haven't guessed why, read the above paragraph again.

A cheap copy of Luc Besson's productions.

[Phroggy · 1/10 · 28 October 2001]

This overbudgeted TV-movie tries to be hip and cool and copies very closely the style of Besson's productions (Poor Said Taghmaoui's character is directly inspired by Naceri in the "Taxi" franchise), from the esthetics to the dialogue. But a cliché-riddled storyline sinks it from the start, not helped by characters which are more annoying than funny or engaging (The worse being "Marcus Lambert", an actor modeled on Van Damme and his linguo.) As you guess, you don't really learn anything about the world of gamers or video cames. All in all, a dreadful experience.

Not as awful as some say

[jean-no · 8/10 · 21 July 2003]

This is a movie of the "sympathetic" kind. Full of good intentions, a little bit too quickly written at no doubt. There is no real "hip hop" movies in France (well, I could talk about "old school" for instance, G@mer is best for me), this one fills this gap, it is a hip-hop movie with some esthetic ideas (the gamer who mixes real life and game), but a little over-played, too much sometimes, Saïd Tagmaoui is far from his best (you can know him from "la haine" or "three kings"), maybe JP Kalfon could have been a really funny character here but he is not used enough. Will I dare to say it... I enjoyed this little movie, this is not "antitrust", "tron" or "hackers" but it will be ok in a computer-relative movie collection !

AND I LIKE IT...

[zakfish · 7/10 · 28 October 2002]

I know directors not use to answer to critics but I'm tired to read agressive things about my work... Gamer was a good idea and a good movie too in a certain way bu the marketing on the film was wrong... It was a comedy with a few FX but it was'nt Matrix of course ! For the first time a french director had the guts to do something about videogames with special effects and original ideas but... Some people just react negativly, like it was a big s**t ! I'm sorry, but it is not... It' a good movie for every kind of people not necesserally involved in videogames as a sect ! Anyway, the movie as been made with 5M? and the result is very honest with a lot of artistics things, like music, light etc... Well, it's a free word, no ? A lot of people like Gamer, thanks God !