OVERRATED "ART FILM" ALERT: The following film is adored by sophisticated and "with it" film fans. The fact that the average person may find the whole thing unfunny and bland is due to their just not being smart enough to understand and appreciate this masterpiece.

There must be two different movies named "Pierrot le Fou" by Godard. That's because most of the reviews on IMDb are glowing and sound like a great movie. Unfortunately that's NOT the film I saw. I saw a piece of cinematic dreck masquerading as "high art". And, the movie was less fun than watching 500 hours of mimes performing! The film is an Absurdist mess--with a completely convoluted plot. The characters speak in a sort of French version of Dr. Seuss-verse and do lots of stupid things that make no sense (and I don't mean this in a GOOD way). For example, as the stars are seen in her apartment, the rooms were filled with a variety of guns as well as a dead body--with no explanation or context. Later, when she apparently expires, the male star (Belmondo) paints his head blue and blows himself up with rather fake-looking dynamite.

In many ways, this movie is very similar to "Prénom Carmen" (also by Godard). So if you liked this film, then you'll probably like the other. Or, in my case, if you can't stand one, you'll probably loathe the other.

According to Leonard Maltin, the rumor is that there was no script for the film. I can believe it!

Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is married with his wealthy Italian wife and has been recently fired from the television where he worked. His wife forces him to go to a party in the house of her influent father that wants to introduce Ferdinand to a potential employer. Her brother brings the babysitter Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina) to take care of their children. Ferdinand feels bored in the bourgeois party and borrows his brother-in-law's car to return home. He meets Marianne, who was his lover five years ago and insists to call him Pierrot, and offers to take her home; however, he spends the night with her and finds that she is involved in smuggling weapons. When Marianne is chased by terrorists, they decide to travel to the beach without any money, leaving Paris and his family behind in a crazy journey to nowhere.

The anarchic "Pierrot le Fou" is another overrated boring and messy madness of Jean-Luc Godard. I hate this dull director and my entertainment with his movies is to glance the non-sense favorable reviews of his fans trying to find justifications and explanations to tell that his movies are worthwhile watching. Most of them are boring, pretentious and without any structure, indicating that they are filmed based in improvisations and not in solid screenplays. The narrative is irritating and nothing makes sense in this pointless movie: there is no message, no screenplay and the acting is very poor. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "O Demônio das 11 Horas" ("The Demon of 11 O'clock")

Pierrot (Jean-Paul Belmondo) escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne (Anna Karina),a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.

Like much pop art, the film uses visuals drawn from cartoons and employs an intentionally garish visual aesthetic based on bright primary colors. You will definitely notice the interesting lighting for the driving scenes, which are silent other than dialogue. This is clearly not a real car, but just a prop with various colored lights shining across it.

The film seems to have been an inspiration for later Japanese animation (notably "Ghost in the Shell" and "Cowboy Bebop") for reasons that are completely unclear to me.