Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Weak-minded Ugolin Soubeyran (Daniel Auteuil) returns to his uncle Cesar 'Le Papet' Soubeyran (Yves Montand) after his military service. Ugolin has a plan to grow carnations. With his greedy uncle, they go to their neighbor to buy his land. However the uncle gets into a fight and kills the owner. The death is assumed to be an accident. Le Papet directs Ugolin to block up a natural spring on the property and destroy the place so the new owner would sell it cheap. Hunchback Jean de Florette (Gérard Depardieu) from the city inherits the property. He brings his family with big plans to spend his inheritance to build a rabbit farm. Ugolin pretends to be his best friend while they sabotage Jean's operation. At first, Jean's hard work and book smarts make the place successful. However a dry summer makes it impossible to farm without water.This is a movie of great ups and downs. I was leery of the movie in the first half as the villains keep getting away with their evil deeds. The little temporary reversal of fortune is the key to the drama. It builds up the hopes of the audience so that the fall could be even greater. The three main actors are terrific. The cinematography is beautiful.

The surroundings near Aubagne in the Bouche Du Rhône in France are wonderfully shot. The story by Marcel Pagnol is well adapted that takes step by step a dramatic end. All the actors did a fine Job and I am curious to see part two "Manon La Source". The sceneries in the time after the second world war are well built and developed. I recommend you to watch it in the original south french dialect with English subtitles. I spent an enjoyable and relaxing Saturday night with my wife.Don't miss the other great movie from the writer Pagnol called La Fille Du Pusatier. Please read my critic on IMDb.Final vote: 8/10.

Having been so blown away by Cyrano De Bergerac, I also watched Jean De Florette, also starring Gerard Depardieu. Jean De Florette is a very different film, but every bit as fantastic. Depardieu is very endearing in a performance that has in his career only been surpassed by Cyrano De Bergerac to me. Yves Montand and Daniel Auteuil are also outstanding as the scheming Soubeyrans. The acting is not Jean De Florette's only good asset. This is an example of a film where everything works. The story is beautifully paced and evocative, the script is witty and very cinematic, the cinematography shimmers, the scenery is breathtaking, the music is lively yet again very understated and the direction does wonderfully in capturing the pace of the seasons changing and Provence's unique atmosphere. All in all, I love this movie just as much as Cyrano De Bergerac, and I am watching Manon of the Spring(and loving it) even as we speak. 10/10 Bethany Cox

I have many favorites, and this is one of the crème de la crème. This is a visually stunning film more like beautiful photographic montage. It is simple, tragic story well told, unlike many of today's plots - implausibly lame, suffering on a CGI crutch for 85 minutes. The simple story is about enduring truths which have been the mainstay of the Greek classics and Shakespeare: Our human strengths, our failings, our virtues, and our vices. The story may be a fiction, but its kernel is not. It is stories and story telling like this which has kept our rapt attention for four thousand years.First we should understand that this film is only the first half the novel by Marcel Pagnol which would have been too long as a single film, and out of necessity, was shot as two. The second half is titled, Manon of the Spring. Neither film stands alone as satisfactory because, obviously, it would be incomplete, and naturally, is also important that the two halves be viewed in sequence. For a fairly dispassionate précis of the plots, I suggest reading the ones on Wikipedia, so I won't be repetitive here. I also recommend reading the boards for comments and discussions.JdF & MotS were both shot at the same time in 1986 with a budget of $17 million making it/them the biggest budget French films up to that time. JdF grossed $86M worldwide, and of that sum, only $4.9M was from the USA. MotS grossed $56M worldwide, of which only $3.9M was from the USA. In other words, culture films are not a good fit for the American viewing audience, and the gross revenue numbers bear this out. The rest of the world seems to bear out this conclusion.Foreign language films rarely do well in the USA for the simple reason that the vast majority of the viewing audience are unilingual anglophones who do not wish to burden themselves with having to work at "understanding" their entertainment - they wish to merely consume it. If it requires the work of reading subtitles or thought, it becomes unpalatable. This film requires your attention and thought!But to be fair to the US viewers, the subtitles are at times incomplete or inaccurate, and unlike the spoken word, they do not convey the emphasis or importance of certain bits of dialogue well. The plot is woven steadily throughout the film, so the viewers with no understanding at all of the French language are missing essential dialogue, and therefore plot.The bottom line is this: You will either be entranced by these two films and love them, or you will be bored by the first 15 minutes, and you'll translate that into "bad film." If your highest quality level of reading is Marvel comics then I suggest you stay away from this one.However, I recall years ago walking into a video store where this was playing on all the monitors. All the patrons in the store, ranging in age from 5 to 75 years, were standing transfixed watching this film. There was something magical about it!