Have you ever watched the reality tv show On The Lot?  It’s a hack show about the search for Hollywood’s next top director … produced by Steven Spielberg.  Gary Marshall, Carrie Fisher, and a guest judge play Simon, Randy, and Paula.  Every Monday you watch—and vote for!—a mini movie by the aspiring directors.  It’s better than watching reruns of cheesy sitcoms on competing stations, but the movies are none too inspired despite the directors’ hard efforts and use of famous actors, like the dad from Family Matters.

That basically sums up my feelings of Paris, Je T’aime. 

Some very famous and talented directors have each more or less made insipid short films around the gimmick—er, theme—of Paris as a backdrop.  Among the twenty directors are the Coen Brothers, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven, Gérard Depardieu, and Christopher Doyle.  The cast of Natalie Portman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Elijah Wood, Nick Nolte, Juliette Binoche, Rufus Sewell, Gena Rowlands, Miranda Richardson, and Steve Buscemi, to name a few is equally impressive. 

The films, however, are surprisingly trite for their celebrated roster.  To say that one film involves a mime and another a vampire should fairly easily indicate the tacky nature of the subject matter.  For the most part, it felt like I was watching one of those esoteric foreign films that plays on PBS at three in morning that defines the general public’s perception of idiosyncratic intellectualism.    

Because they are so short, the films relied on cheap tugs of the heartstring to quickly relay their messages of loneliness, love, fear, and bliss. Occasionally, one of the short films in Paris, Je T’aime hit the mark.  A vignette would capture the innocence or the brutality of love.  The complexities of a character could be beautifully poignant.  And just as you were getting swept up into the emotion of a story, it would abruptly end and fade into the next film, leaving you no time to pause and consider its message.

Despite its title, Paris, Je T’aime does little to make you fall in love with Paris or make you understand its distinct personality.  It could have easily taken place in any other metropolitan city.