THE ARTIST really doesn't live up to its hype.

Before filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius crafted THE ARTIST, he made a couple of comedies inspired by the French O.S.S. spy series of the 60s.  These films (one of which I saw) are essentially AUSTIN POWERS-meets-BORAT satires of racism/colonialism/sexism; they got some art-theater showings and are available on video.

THE ARTIST is a straight-up attempt at remaking the kind of silent film with intertitles plus a musical track that Charlie Chaplin did twice in the 1930s (CITY LIGHTS and MODERN TIMES).  It's technically brilliant (looking spot-on like a shot-in-the-20s actual silent) and will undoubtedly make an American star of Berenice Bejo (who will probably be inundated with offers to play wild-and-crazy girlfriends of Jason Segel and/or Paul Rudd).  And it has Harvey Weinstein pulling out the promotional stops to make it a left-field Oscar winner in the tradition of LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.

Unfortunately, the film is overlong, overthin, a bit too one-dimensional--and, as with the somewhat superior HUGO, unlikely to find a supportive mass audience in an era where silent cinema is as much a thing of the past as books, print newspapers, VCRs, DVD players and reviews by people who were once paid a lot of money just to write film criticism.