   The Intouchables was voted "cultural event of the year" in
France after becoming one of the biggest box-office hits in the
country's history, which just goes to show they don't have a
hell of a lot to feel snooty about these days. If this thing
were in English with American stars, we'd know its kind a mile
off—a feel-good, based-on-a-true-story crowd-pleaser that mixes
punchlines and uplift in equal measure.  A U.S. remake is as
inevitable as an oil spill, but your best reason to see the
original is that the remake won't have Omar Sy. Magnetic and
self-assured, this dynamite actor can almost make us forget
we're watching the hothouse Parisian version of a cliché we're
wearily familiar with on this side of the Atlantic: an
exuberant, rascally but wise Nègre magique—that's "magic Negro"
to us, folks—who's been put on this earth for no other purpose
except to improve white people's lives.  He plays Driss, a
Franco-Senegalese petty hood from the wrong side of the Metro
tracks who unexpectedly turns up among th