My Darling B and I stood in line for rush tickets for an hour, hoping to snag a couple tickets to see The Intouchables. It was the first time we’ve rushed a movie, but this was one of our first picks, and we had tickets reserved until The Great Ticket Snafu of 2012 knocked them out of our on-line shopping cart. The movie was sold out by the time we were able to re-create our fantasy schedule.

When we ended up with a three-hour hole in our Saturday afternoon, we figured, Why not try for the rush tickets? If we didn’t get them, there was always a place downstairs were we could hang out with a couple beers before the next movie. So we joined the queue, and the anticipation built up as the line accordioned toward the door. It was touch-and-go down to the wire; the movie was running when they decided to let us in, and we ended up in the last two seats together in the farthest corner of the movie theater.

And I am so glad we squeezed in. This was a thoroughly enjoyable movie. It’s not a great movie; no cosmic secrets are revealed; it doesn’t hesitate to use cliches; and it’s more than a little sentimental – but I think I already admitted that I like to indulge in sentimental movies now and again.

More than anything else, The Intouchables is a lot of fun. I couldn’t help but laugh. Even when the jokes were cliched, they were funny, delivered with perfect timing by Omar Sy, who has got to be a stand-up comedian in his other life, or should be. And Francois Cluzet, who we saw in the captivating film Tell No One, was Sy’s perfectly reserved second banana. We’re thinking maybe we should go for rush tickets more often.