Ian (Flash Review)Another visually clever film by Tati. While not as ingenious as his more notable films, this offers a few pleasant gags here and there. The protagonist Mr. Hulot is tasked with delivering a concept car; a camper transforming vehicle to an auto show. During the road trip, everything that can go wrong that you can think of goes wrong: flat tire, out of gas, etc. There are some French cultural gags as well as jokes about everyday people and what they do while alone in their cars such as picking noses and eating odd foods. Overall, there are a mixture of visually funny moments and physical comedy. Some scenes lose focus and are less funny and are drug out too long. Not as good as Mon Oncle or Playtime.

James Arnold So far, this is the only Jacques Tati movie I've seen. It's extremely visual. It looks great. In particular, the opening of the film and the movie's final major act are wonderful to watch. A few scenes show characters being swallowed up in massive sets and environments. The shot gets wider and wider, an approximation of how insignificant each of the characters are to those around them. Such shots are stunning in their beauty.Most of the comedy in Trafic is visual as well. I normally like wordplay, but I ended up liking Trafic's visual humor as well. For example, two workers are installing a sign for an "auto show", and one instructs the other to rotate the giant letter "O" before putting it up. Yet the O is perfectly round and looks the same at any rotation. Most of the comedy is from similar workplace incompetence and inefficiency. Much like a real workplace, there's nobody in the movie pointing out how ridiculous everyone is acting. The satire isn't mean-spirited; Tati isn't implying that workers are lazy or stupid, just that sometimes we end up behaving foolishly.A scene in the middle reminds me of Saturday Night Live, during its creative peak. Customs inspectors are suspicious of a prototype camper car, so its salespeople have to explain all of its features. This includes an electric razor inside the steering wheel, an extendable bed, a trunk-mounted shower, and a grill that seems to use heat from the engine. It's absurd and brilliant, and I've only listed some of the car's features. The inspectors aren't always convinced: hands having been squirted by the built-in soap dispenser, an official requests to have the soap analyzed. Anyone who has seen Charlie Chaplin's movies will see shades of his characters in Jacques Tati's Mr. Hulot -- he changes a tire with extremely exaggerated, rhythmic alternation between crouching and standing.All of the humor, both visual and spoken, translates excellently from French (and there is some English in the movie anyway), although one joke about a gas station giving out trinkets will only be fully appreciated by audiences who were alive when gas stations still did this (before the 1970s?). I think it compares very easily to "Airplane!" or The Naked Gun. In contrast to The Naked Gun, Trafic is more deathly serious despite being hilarious. Part of the comedy is playing "what's wrong with this picture?", and sometimes it's really hard! If you miss the jokes, or have to have them explained, you won't find the movie as funny.96 minutes long is the perfect length for this movie. It conveys the annoyance of waiting for a roadside mechanic or being late for an event, without forcing viewers to watch in real-time. There are plenty of jokes throughout the film to keep the audience's attention. Despite being called "Trafic", you're not going to see any metropolitan gridlock here. The movie happens *because* of some cars, but most of the movie is not *in* a car.Full disclosure: I watched this along with around 15 other young people in a film comedy class. I liked it far more than any of the other students, who found it to be either: occasionally smart but mostly boring, or entirely boring.

Ilpo Hirvonen Trafic certainly isn't the last film by Jacques Tati, but it sure is the last successful and well known one. Mostly because it is his last film with his standard character, Monsier Hulot. After Trafic Tati still directed the television Sweden-France co production Parade (1974) and started making the sports-documentary Forza Bastia, which his daughter, Sophie Tatischeff edited and finished in 2002. But I personally like to see Trafic as his last film, as his cinematic legacy.The plot of Trafic is very simple; Mr. Hulot, car driver and the PR girl have to take a new car to an exhibition in Amsterdam. They arrive few days late - the only actual exhibition is at the customs. The world of Jacques Tati is full of gags, he doesn't spend much time with his stories, but he writes his gags for years. And the pleasantly surprising thing is how the gags are made - they aren't taken too far, as they often are in comedies of today. Dozens of events happen at the same time, dozens of people get in these and by coincidence they come across with each other.The destruction of old core values and habitat have been common themes for Jacques Tati. But in Play Time (1967) and Trafic (1971) he goes far deeper in the mechanization of life. Play Time showed us the futuristic Paris cursed by globalization. It would be too superficial to see Play Time simply just as a satire of urban living and modern society. In Trafic we see that Tati doesn't build that big a difference between urban and rural living. People come across with same kind of situations, troubles and madness. I think Play Time is his highest achievement and it's so much more than just a satire about modern society. In Play Time's postmodern Paris and in Trafic's highway the individual finds the very same challenges.Trafic is basically a satire about mass industry - cars are built and built so long until the consumers are satisfied, which will never happen. This is the age people live their lives with avarice. Just as Mon oncle so is Trafic about consumer hysteria - the customs scene is a great example of this. The mechanization of life is the main theme in Play Time and in Trafic - in Trafic, once again, the customs scene is the greatest example of this, but it can be seen in just about every scene. For instance the randomness of relationships, which is a reflection of the twisted relation between work and the mechanization of life.

Poul With Traffic coming out I started thinking about one of the earliest films I remember from my childhood. Trafic must have a very significant impression on me as I vividly recall the frustration rendered by it. Sitting there as a child almost jumping out of the chair in plain irritation of the quirks of Tati.