GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

FilmCriticLalitRao What happens to a person when a small, crazy idea becomes an obsession ? Any obsession has no meaning unless efforts are made to take it to fruition. This is something which has been nicely described by Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael in "Toto the Hero". As a film about the change of identities, there is a good depiction of family atmospheres in the narrative where one gets to see the major protagonists at different stages of their lives. This effect is created by showing all the three major stages of a person's life namely childhood, adulthood and old age. There is a wise usage of time as events related to the protagonists' lives moves back and forth between past and the present, old age, youth and childhood in order to give viewers an idea about the stage where the things must have gone wrong. It is not so often that revenge gets transformed into pardon in a film. However, Toto-our film's hero shows that he is really a true hero as he sacrifices his obsession in order to achieve overall feeling of greatness. He achieves that distinction by forgoing violence and revenge. Lastly, it must be told that "Toto Le Héros" is not really a film for intellectuals. However, cinema is believed to have scored a minor victory over "Philosophy" as one of the villainous characters of this film is called Kant.

vincentanton I gave this film a rating of "1" because of the terrible things it contains. There is near-child pornography, an adolescent brother and sister that are in love with each other and take baths together and sleep together (one scene shows the boy licking the girl's arm), the children plotting to burn the neighbor's house down, an older man fantasizing about stuffing a bottle of pills down a nurse's throat, the two sublings smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary, and the film shows a man that has been suffocated, choked, drowned, and shot. If you liked "The Eighth Day," which was written and directed by the same person, you won't like this. It's disgusting and violent and has perverted sexuality.

David Allison Jaco van Dormael, I love you. When I first saw this film in a dilapidated arts cinema in Cambridge on a cold winter's night, I wasn't expecting much. The only review I'd read was mildly sniffy. It was French, it was about la condition humaine. I thought it'd be a reasonable way to pass a couple of hours.When I emerged from that dark pit of a cinema, I felt, at least for a while, as if my eyesight had been transformed. As we walked back to my friend's flat, I became fixated on one thing after another - the rain upon the cobbles, the light on the church, the darkness of the sky - I felt about five years old all over again. Since then, this film has never been out of my top five. And probably never will.That is not say it's perfect. It's message is perhaps a little too bleak for my liking, and it does indulge itself in the precept that life it utterly meaningless. But how the visuals of the film contradict that sentiment! Every shot filled with colour, with life, with imagination.In a way, Toto is an old-fashioned film - a thriller in the Third Man/Citizen Kane mold - a complex story unfolding in a semi-linear fashion, in this case throughout one man's whole life. Dour realism this certainly ain't. A wonderfully naive 40s (?) style chanson reappears, as the adult 'Van Chickensoup' watches his dead father sing from the back of a truck in front of him. Flowers sway in time to the song. The child truly believes that his father met his mother by landing in the garden from a parachute. Scene after scene of joyful play follow each other.But this is no art-house foppery. This is a tight, mean, well-constructed tale about the feeling that dogs us all - is this all life is? Could I have been happier as someone else? Are they happier than me? Am I lucky or unlucky? And most importantly, this: Why, when life seems so hard at times, can we find so much joy in small things, in a flower, or a kiss, or crazy weather, or new clothes?Forget the French subtitles, a fact that seems to put off so many North American and British viewers, forget the 'art-house' tag. I own this film and have shown it to scores of friends, all of whom have walked away astonished at its vision. I assure you that you will love this film. It's alright, you don't have to thank me, spreading the word is enough. ;-) Watch it today! And then watch the Eighth Day, Van Dormael's astonishing second feature.

Cu-Top This movie is sheer visual poetry. Although it is in subtitles and I don't speak a lick of French, I found myself not needing to read the subtitles as the visuals told the entire story. This is rather impressive, as the story is very complicated. It tells the tale of one man's life by interweaving four different elements of his life: Childhood, Middle-Age, Old-Age, and a Film Noir Fantasy World. To give it even more of a chance of being confusing, these elements are not shown chronologically. However, "Toto..." is not confusing at all. It pulls off this complicated plot beautifully. This movie truly is a Modern Day Classic!! DVD? When? Criterion Edition!