The We and the I

To call this thrillingly original, deeply felt movie a coming-of-age story would be to insult it with cliché. It’s much more the story, or rather a series of interlocking, incomplete stories, about what it feels like to be a certain age and to feel caught, as the title suggests, between the desire to be yourself and the longing to fit in.

By the end of the ride, we’ll see glimpse of happiness, sadness, joy, heartbreak, maybe even tragedy, if cell phone-shot recollections are to be believed. All bases are covered, in other words, in one late-afternoon ride, a ride Gondry and his cast will make you want to take.

Still, credit Gondry, like Tocqueville before him, with at least re-examining tired clichés and scraping the rust off stereotypes.

The problem with The We And The I: Gondry is focused more on moments than on the film as a whole.

Gondry's argument – that pack mentality crushes individual expression – follows a similarly predictable route, but there's enough of his signature playfulness (especially in the use of mobile-phone footage to present flashbacks) to keep the journey entertaining.

By the end of the ride, the movie’s messy humanity has officially calcified into After-School Special clichés; given the choice between handcrafted whimsy and heavy-handedness, we’ll take the former, thanks.

Muddled, muffled and mixing empty comedy with empty dramatics, The We and the I is an abject failure.