A popular French movie that features a black man who is hired to help a white quadriplegic has many U.S. critics screaming racism.

Intouchables ("the Untouchables"), released on Nov. 2, 2011, was the most watched movie in France last year and the sixth most watched in the country's history. It even garnered the praise of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said he wants to have the cast over for dinner.

But despite the praise the French have bestowed upon the film, many American critics are upset with its "black stereotypes."

The film's black character, Driss, played by actor Omar Sy, is, according to Variety critic Jay Weissberg, "treated as nothing but a performing monkey (with all the racist associations of such a term), teaching the stuck-up white folk how to get 'down.'... It's painful to see."

The French have not responded well to the critiques. "In the Variety article, I perceive the expression of an inquisitorial spirit that, colored by paranoia, remains rather rare in France among journalistic critiques," said French philosopher and historian Pierre-Andre Taguieff to the Los Angeles Times. "This anti-racist extremism is, in my eyes, an American specialty."

The mostly black residents of Paris' northern-Bundy neighborhood, where the film was shot, didn't seem offended. "I loved the movie, and I could associate with it," said Kader Doumbia, 21, who was hanging out at a kebab restaurant with a friend. "We're like that: people who like to kid around and say how we feel."

A few weeks ago we had a Dutch magazine call Rihanna an "Ultimate Niggabitch." This week we have a French film being criticized for racial insensitivity. Every week we seem to have a new racial incident at a European soccer game. For all the critiques of America and the racial inequalities here, Europe sometimes makes our country look like what former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called his country: a "racial democracy."

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.

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