The person who wrote that this is a fairy tale was right.An older man helps an adolescent come of age.This is basically a beautifully crafted movie. I think the story would have worked better if Moises had been a shyer introverted kid instead of a semi street smart hooker-hiring Ferris Bueler's day off type making dance moves. This film is obviously a fairy tale primarily aimed at 50 something men who might have been about 14 in 1960 creating a nostalgic fantasy for them. Why are the French so into that? I lived in French North Africa during the first half of the 1960s...and I was 8 to 14 at the time....I identified with the vintage cars a lot more than with the not too smart would be hood who was the hero.One script flaw...Albania was a rigid closed Maoist society in those days...they could not possibly have driven through it on the way to Turkey.Still I enjoyed the movie despite having my jaw semi clenched through a lot of it--I generally hate coming of age movies--personal thing. Everyone wishes they had a mentor like Shariff. However his litany of little clichés of wisdom reminded me of ones you see in B grade oriental movies. They were only bearable because Shariff is a great actor in the hands of anyone else they would have been a lightening rod for ire. "You lose everything you keep" "If you want to know something talk to someone don't read a book". Yawn...Yes go ahead and rent the movie overlook the pearls of wisdom by looking at Shariffs face or tweak them a little.... there are so many worse films out there.

This movie is billed as a warm, feel good movie. The Omar Sharif character is kindly, but the lead character, Momo, a boy in his early teens, has the emotional rug suddenly and catastrophicallly yanked out from under him five times in the movie. He handles this with relative aplomb, but as a viewer I was left gasping.You would think a movie about a single older man who befriends a young teen and takes him to the steam bath and gives him money would necessarily have sexual overtones, but it just never comes up. The movie is set in a more innocent time. There is plenty of sex in the movie, but all heterosexual.

This simple type of "buddy" film story has been seen too many times before to be totally new and different to me, thus it did not grab and hold my interest and heart the same way it might have done for a young person seeing the story for the first time. And, as shown in the film, there is always a "first time".That being said, the film was pleasant enough if not overly impressive, as it was mostly a gentle little story about a lonely, older Muslim storekeeper, with a vast storehouse of wisdom and life experiences, befriending an essentially orphaned 16 year old Jewish(more or less incidentally) boy in 1960 Paris, and the small slices of daily life in the teeming semi-ghetto they shared as the old man's wisdom and life's experience was gradually transferred to the next generation, as it always must be done. As the old man himself said, "if you want to learn something, don't read a book...talk to someone". Shoplifting, hooker sex, a suicide, failed first love, an adoption, a buddy road trip, and the end...there you have it. Not a lot of weight here, but enjoyable enough. And, it must be for most as this story is filmed again and again through the years and this one was nearly as good as any. The story worked well enough for me until the final buddy road trip, where it all ended a bit too abruptly for my taste. Too much had been shared to end it all so quickly. Seeing an older man/young boy story like this one unfolding, I might suspect an underlying pedophilia reason for the man's intense interest in the boy. What a pleasure to see that not develop here, knowing all too well the weird and sick story development of many of today's films that is often so disgusting to mature viewers.Many thanks to the filmmaker for not taking that edgy "modern" track, and for keeping the film's overall sense of sweetness and loving paternalism intact to the end.

I have one very general criticism of this movie. I'm just going to try and kind of argue it out as I write. Well, the style of the movie is quite light-hearted. But it also deals with quite serious subject matter. It has its funny, sad and touching moments but never has them in the extreme: poignant, hilarious or tragic moments. But, I hear you say, Momo's father leaving, is pretty tragic. So is Momo disowning his mother and Paul not being real and Ibrahim dying. I agree, they are very tragic, but none of them (except perhaps the latter) is made to really jerk the tears out of an audience. That is not their purpose in the film. Now, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing at all: to have a light-hearted style for serious content. In fact, it's quite refreshing and matter of fact that way. And the film, I think, successfully uses this style. Except for one thing. All this serious stuff they deal with, it's just the background to the story. The real story is the friendship/ relationship between Ibrahim and Momo, and in the process all these additional strands of the story, which each could have easily become the main one, get kind of glossed over. Told quickly, without depth. And so in the process I find, that no story gets told very deeply at all. The real point is made yes, and in a subtle way, but we're still left (or I am left) with a few questions and a wee bit of emptiness. For example, I really wanted to know what Momo thought about Paul's apparent non-existence. But, it is never mentioned again in the film. We are just left to fathom out who was lying, as Momo is, but we don't get any feedback on what was a pretty important...thing (couldn't think of a word) in his life. I actually really liked this film, but the more I think about it, the more I find this fault bothering me. That nothing is explored to it's fullest. Even the build up of Ibrahim's and Momo's relationship is kind of rushed. And their trip to Turkey doesn't add all that much to the film. I appreciate the fact that this may be the director's strategy. On some days, the uneventful-ness of Blue Street is captured really well. But the trip to Turkey is kind of like a bunch of tourist shots. Well, I said I'd argue myself out. And I think I certainly went round in a few circles there. But, my main point was: I don't think so many seemingly momentous/dramatic events in Momo's life should have been put in, if they were going to be unexplored and redundant.