Customer Reviews

Sitcom

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This film is about the breakdown of the bourgeois family. It is very indebted to the films of Pedro Almodovar and Luis Bunuel. The head of the house brings home at rat. As a result, everyone including the maid, starts acting out their latent desires. S&M, suicide and incest are the rules of the day. Eventually the family realizes that they don't need the rat as they have all been liberated by it and are now free. It becomes apparent that Dad is the rat they need to get rid of. Who needs him? All he does is sit around and read the paper and allow everyone to do whatever they please. It is interesting and some of the sex scenes are very explicit, but it is not for everyone.

I am amazed at many of the reviews here that take this film so seriously. The title itself should give away the intention to make a film that parodies sitcoms and soap operas.
In my view, it is not only successful at doing that, but plays with audience perceptions and biases in a very clever way and misleads us brilliantly. It is all in good fun and you should enjoy it too if you don't take it too seriously.
Ozon is probably the most original French director working today and it is well worth the time spent to see his other films. He is not that well known in France and this movie shocked some French friends that I watched it with, so question your own prejudices a bit and have fun with this.

Help! I am in serious need of psychological help. I actually enjoyed and liked this movie. This movie is very bizarre and plain downright wierd! I still don't see the logic or reason to the plot of this film. It is going to take further viewing for me to understand the concept of this film, if there is one?
It seems that the film revolves around the disfunctional force of a family that is torn apart after the arrival of a pet rat. There seems to be some morbid force in the rat that transcends into the atmosphere of the house that sends the helpless inhabitants into a sexual frenzy of bizarre events, incest, homosexuality, suicide, and pure sexual fetish escapade.
The entire film is filled with sexual imagery and sometimes crude scenes between the characters. The film is worthwhile just for the sheer entertainment of what is going to happen next among the characters. The plot as mentioned is twisted and sick, but that is what makes it so interesting. It is definitely a very unconventional film plot. You usally don't see plots like this in film, at least I never have.
I enjoyed the entire film for its bizarre and sexual content. I particularly ejoyed the scene in which sexy actor Stephane Rideau is dressed in fetish gear and the exposing of his genitals at full lift, if you know what I mean? It is actually because of Stephane Rideau that I saw this film because I enjoyed his performances in films like "Come Undone", and "Wild Reeds". Over all, the entire cast deserves credit for good performances in such an unusual and ludicrous film. "Sitcom" deserves a "10" for creativity.

This movie is a variation on Kafka's "Metamorphosis" taken to even more absurd extremes. It also took several cinematic & thematic cues from Dali's "Un Chien Andulou." Both of those works, like "Sitcom", are about rebelling of what is often regarded as proper or right in normal society.

The rat, an unusual, off-beat pet in an otherwise normal house, inspires the abnormal elements of the characters' subconscious, causing them to act in the most bizarre fashion, beginning with the son spontaneously announcing his homosexuality at the dinner table, followed by his immediate seduction by the maid's husband, then the inexplicable suicide attempt by the daughter.

After that, the movie gets wierd.

Through all of the strangeness & familial collapse the father remains steadfast that absolutely nothing is wrong that everything will come out all right in the end. And then ultimately his fate is the strangest of all.

There are movies out there that demands that the audience think about them, that in order to get something of satisfaction they have to put some effort of imagination, of their own personality into it, like a cinematic Rohrschach test (was that spelled right?). This is one of those movies. Highly recommended for fans of the Avant Garde cinema.

Digusting and disturbing are probably the words that come out from you after you have watched the movie. Yet, it does not mean that it is bad. Sitcom is a very clever movie indeed. This movie's humour lies on who should exist, the sexually 'normal'? or the sexually 'indecent'? The climax of the paterfamilias killing the whole family is followed by the anti-climax of the family killing the indifferent father figure. Are they killing the rat or their father? We should think about it. The dialogues and plot are entertaining, but at the same time, also pathetic as they reveal the deep isolation among members in a dysfunctional middle-class family.

A friend presented this to me -- I had no idea what to expect. If you're reading my review of this item and know little else, devote yourself to my review -- it's best you know as little about the film as possible.

Without giving away the story, I will tell you: this is not your average "sitcom" --> it's a black comedy, the likes of which reminds me of Miike Takashi's "Happiness of the Karakuris" (probably a good bet if you've seen one, thinking about the other). "Sitcom" does so many loopy, funny things with its normal French family (ha) that I was nearly jumping out of my seat going "You'd never see that in an American film!" "No way!!!" "Oh brother!" There are many gut-wrenching laughs to be had here.

This film constantly defies our expectations, twist after twist. On one level, it is very light, parodic fare; on another level, it says a lot of about our subconscious.

Done on a minimal budget, it relies on brilliant characterizations, writing and direction. "Sitcom" is a breath of fresh air.

This is an amusing, entertaining but not very deep gloss on suburban decay. The tables are turned on the buttoned down family in this movie. When the respectable, staid father brings home a lab rat in a cage, it becomes quite clear that the family members themselves are the guinea pigs. The rat exerts a strange, hypnotic power: these repressed suburbanites toss their inhibitions to the wind and embrace their darkest, wildest fantasies, be they erotic or morbid. This premise certainly promises much, and the filmmakers clearly owe a big debt to Bunuel and even Almodovar. But the film lacks the obscene, sacrilegious kicks of the one and the sultry, melodramatic absurdity of the other. And the film is somewhat wobbly in tone and structure; it has moments that promise revelation and visual beauty but never quite delivers. And when the father has his own explosive epiphany, it hasn't the deadpan shock that Bunuel would have given it. The tone is listless, inert. It's unclear at the end just what the father represented that had to be destroyed: patriarchal repressiveness? cold intellect? hostility to animal impulse? A far more disturbing scene is the son's confrontation with his mother in bed. I found myself giggling surreptitiously to deflect the impact of this most uncomfortable and blasphemous of Freudian scenarios. This scene combines horror and comedy in a way that the rest of the movie fails to live up to--for once, we are drawn into the vortex where anxiety gives way to irony. Next to this scene, the rest of the film looks like trendy, self-conscious posturing, as if the filmmakers thought themselves above the real, unsettling content of their theme.

This is one of the craziest movies i have ever watched! it made me laugh... feel really ackward at times but over all i loved it. It was very weird and different. I am very happy i can add this movie to my collection.

As many know the french are very libral so there are many scenes in this movie that I enjoy because they would never be in any non-rated nc-17 movie from america. I also thought the idea of a cute little rat that corupts a family is great. i wont give away the ending it is too clasicly cheezy. Its not the best movie but you'll keep whatching to see who turns homosexual next or to see what the rat makes the family members do.

Gross. This movie is one of those gross movies that people will hate or love.

Me? I didn't love or hate it. I'm used to dysfunction. Everyone in the 20th century is.

The story is, as one reviewer put it, a twist on "The Metamorphysis". It's bizarre, fun, morbid. It's actually quite simple.

THis movie isn't for everyone.