French film-makers are good at turning out silly comedies that foreigners find unwatchable. They have a better export record with highbrow, low-plot movies, set in chic apartments with parquet floors, that feel moodily French. Just occasionally, however, they come up with a comic gem. “Intouchables”, directed by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, is one of those cleverly pitched, well-scripted, feel-good comic films typically crafted in Hollywood; it is a delight to see that the French can sometimes pull them off too. With more than 4m tickets sold since it opened earlier this month, the film is set to be a boxoffice smash.

Less deftly handled, the treatment of such a subject could have fallen into a number of traps. Instead, the film's light touch finds comedy in both men's handicaps: the one physical, the other social. Each, in his own unsentimental way, understands the other better than do those around them. This unlikely chemistry is captured in the opening sequence, when Driss roars through the streets of night-time Paris, funk music at full blast and Philippe in the passenger seat, giving his employer the thrill of the Maserati he owns but cannot drive.

French critics have been thoroughly charmed. Le Figaronewspaper called the film “faultless”. Paris-Match described it as “the best scripted, best acted, funniest and most moving that we have seen in a long time”. It has surely launched Mr Sy, a black comedian best-known for a short nightly sketch on Canal Plus, a television channel, on the way to stardom. Bob and Harvey Weinstein, two Hollywood producers, have acquired the rights for America and Britain. Here's hoping that English-language audiences will get to see the original French version, and not just a remake.