The serendipitous moment always has its enchantments, and often occurs in lightly colored, sweetly scented ways: finding a wonderful jacket in a pile of Goodwill clothing, an ancient piece of silver with your own initials on it at a garage sale, or seeing a red-haired girl with green eyes passing you by in a store you never intended to enter.

For a film reviewer, it’s not always as exciting as all that, but now and then a small movie pops up like a stray blossom in the thorny bramble bushes of violent and noisy summer blockbusters, where the D in 3-D usually stands for deadly dull.

Such was my chance meeting with “The Intouchables.” Yes, your spell checker will reject it, you should not.

The story, written and directed by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano is simple and direct, a touch cliched and soft served, (but based on a true story with one strange major change.)

At once we meet a very large black man named Driss (Omar Sy, who in this role, beat out “The Artist’s” Jean Dujardin for the Best Actor Caesar Award in France). Driss is a Senegalese Parisian street maven who drifts from job to job and lives on French unemployment payments, for which he must regularly apply for jobs he knows he has no chance of getting.

In his weekly rounds to qualify for the franc, Driss applies for a job as an aide to Philippe, a fabulously wealthy and tragically widowed and disabled Frenchman (France’s great star Francois Cluzet) who, due to a sporting accident, is now a quadriplegic and forever dependent on the kindness and patience of others.

With a secretary, Philippe interviews a dozen applicants for a personal caregiver replacement. They all run the gamut of being cloying, annoying, over-qualified and boring.

Enter Driss, who roars in with a cold, brutal manner, like a man who just wants to get his card signed and use the bathroom. But Philippe is instantly charmed, and despite the horror of those around him, senses that this is his man. A bargain is struck. A trial is offered. Driss accepts, and is ushered into a world of luxury he could not imagine exists. His accommodations are stunningly opulent, and Driss becomes a 9-year-old in a deluxe toyland.

On the job, Driss refuses to lug his employer around in an ambulance SUV and instead insists on using Philippe’s long-unused Maserati.

Of course the rest of the film takes us on a hilarious joy ride of high-speed rides through the romantic streets of midnight Paris, where he introduces Philippe to the rhapsodic pleasures of ganja and shaky, clever games with the gendarmes. Philippe, in turn, provides fabulous food, private jet flights and hang-gliding in the Pyrenees. On one such voyage, we’re treated to the best hysterical night at the opera since Groucho’s “A Night at the Opera.” Now, we find ourselves voyeurs in a delightful Gallic-buddy road show.

As a bonus, we get to enjoy one of the best upbeat movie scenes in years, when Driss turns a dull Vivaldi/Telemann concert audience, orchestra included, into a wild twisting flash dance to the tune of Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland.” Every movie has one scene that takes the roof off. This is that one.

As Philippe, the delightful Francois Cluzet, France’s Dustin Hoffman, breathes life into the elegant cripple who refuses to moan or whimper, but instead finds fulfillment and unexpected joy in cracking open a bright new universe for a fellow human being, who surprises all involved by returning the favor.

Omar Sy’s Driss is a 6-foot, 2-inch walking dark continent of solar energy, crackling street wit and a surprising gift for tenderness. When he leaves the impoverished streets of his neighborhood and moves up into the rarefied air of Parisian haut monde, changes — subtle at first — begin to appear. He manages, with a dose of tough love and street wisdom, to tame Philippe’s estranged adopted daughter and shape the whispering, slipper-shuffling staff, into a working happy team of players. Frank Capra anyone?

“The Intouchables” is, at first sip, an uncomplicated, happy vintage. But after a glass or two, lovely and deeper shadings arise. The accusations of some critics who found it racist are, in my opinion, too caught up in the gloss of PC. The same stones were hurled at “Driving Miss Daisy” and “The Help.” You can’t please everyone, but damned if “Intouchables” doesn’t come very, very close.

J.P. Devine is a former stage and screen actor.

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