A good entertaining movie! Good movie, do not a comedy and parody, not just a film about drug addicts and irresponsible people. Film about the cynicism of our time on the venality of all. With the offer to see the world differently. The depth of the fall into the abyss of immorality. There is black humor and is not normative lexicon, as well as elements of eroticism and a lot of blood. The world of advertising so is business. The ending is so generally pleasantly surprised. Such an end, but as it turned out is not the end. Frankly I do not understand people who write something like "wasting time", etc. Movies must be different! And do not worry on the "worst film of the book." Just look!

I pretty much hated the movie right from the start. You just know quite fast when you start watching a film, any film, whether the film rings true or whether it's full of sh*t. 99 francs was the latter.The film was full of clichés and bad jokes. Probably some of the "funny" stuff was France-centric and don't mean that much to others, but that can't really explain the staggering dumbness I had to witness. I felt like I was treated like a 10 year old who has never seen a film or read a book, or really knows nothing about the realities of the world. Actually it felt like the makers were 15 year old teens who felt like they wanted to set the record straight of what the advertising world reaaalllyyy is like. But the problem is that there was absolutely nothing new here. We've seen this stuff million times before.Like other reviewers have pointed out here this was apparently a successful book transformed to film. That explains a lot, because usually it's really hard to achieve the atmosphere successfully. And this film tried really just too much. In a way I appreciate the franticness of the film, and of course I do appreciate the obviously high production values, but to me it was all just a waste. The knowledge of those can't erase the disappointing feeling the film gave me, and that's why I only give it 3 stars.

This is an excellent black comedy yet very cynical and pessimistic. Every character in the movie is ridiculous: art designers constantly on drugs, product managers with a complete lack of originality, models who would sleep with anyone to get a part. But, behind those characters emerges some truth about the way advertising works and how we are manipulated by it without knowing it. The whole point of the movie is to show how you can sell an industrial basic yoghurt by giving something more, "a brand", selling a dream. On that point, I would disagree with previous comments on the significance of the ending. It is far from being a nice "World Aid", moral ending. It is in fact the opposite. The jungle episode where everything seems perfect is in fact only...a dream caused by an advertisement. At the end of his life, the ad creator falls himself in the trap of advertising. A fantastic way to end the movie!

Jan Kounen's adaptation of Frédéric Beigbeder's bestseller has, to put it in wiki lingo, multiple issues. First, it commits the deadly sin of literature adaptations: excessive off-the-screen narration by the main character Octave, an abusive, drug-addicted advertisement creative. There's a lot of plot development which is never on-screen, and the narrator tries to do exactly what he blames the advertisement business for: lead us astray.That's the second weak point of this film: by following the main character's viewpoint, it invests advertisement with almost god-like power. However, studies in the field (as one's own living experience) do not confirm a definite impact of advertisement on consumer choice. If you are aware of this, and especially if you are a woman, and most especially if you are a homemaker, you may find the constant bickering on the ease of manipulating (female) minds rather off-topic and sexist. To be fair, this irritating aspect is faithful to the novel.But to conclude with the third and major flaw of the film: the stereotypes don't allow for any social statement. If larger-than-life characters keep dishing it out against society and each other, where is the social comment? And if it's a drama, why not focus on the main events - Octave's falling out with his job and lifestyle, and his incapability to admit his feelings to the only woman he's ever loved? Instead, the viewer is being bombarded with F/X and heavy visual leanings on Spike Jonze, the Coen Brothers and Terry Gilliam, leading more or less nowhere.The sad thing is: when there's no talk and no abuse, this is actually excellent stuff. A wordless 'alternative ending' really does what the rest of the film was only gibbering about: deliver an accurate summary on how the wish to make one's life less twisted will ultimately remain a (death) wish for the 'civilized' man. More of such imagery, and this would have been a masterpiece.