Why elites hate sweet Amelie. (Now Playing).

Film critics with a highly political bent always run the risk of being out of touch. But they've looked especially ludicrous denouncing the popular recent movie import Amelie. The highest-grossing French movie in North American history, and the favorite to win as Best Foreign Language Film at the upcoming Academy Awards, Amelie has become a punching bag for the sort of politicized, elitist critics who could ascribe a Marxist subtext to the most innocuous Disney cartoon.

The fuss they've created seems silly once you've watched the movie in question. A whimsical modern parable about a shy Parisian waitress (Audrey Tautou) who finds happiness by performing anonymous acts of kindness for her neighbors, Amelie is about as political as a nursery rhyme. If the movie is "about" anything, it's an ode to appreciating life's little pleasures, a notion that's reinforced each time director Jean-Pierre Jeunet introduces a character by sharing his or her "likes" (Amelie herself likes "cracking creme brulee with a teaspoon").

In reality, Amelie is an invigorating pleasure. Aside from Tautou's spirited performance, the bold colors and impulsive edits that define Jeunet's directing style bring an eye-popping sense of optimism to the screen. It's a feel-good movie all right, but one in which the good feelings are earned, not manipulated by cheap sentiment. Heaven forbid a film should want us to feel good; apparently that's yet another pleasure that zealous political correctness would seek to deny everyday people.

What could possibly be stirring up the P.C. crowd? According to some left-wing critics, thousands of moviegoers are blind to the movie's reactionary racism--evidenced by the fact that Amelie takes place in a stylized, picturesque Paris with clean streets and primarily white characters. Writing in Film Comment, French critic Frederic Bonnaud describes such a milieu as a "retro postcard version of France, undeniably cleansed of all cultural diversity and, by extension, all immigrants." Never mind that the filmmakers aren't trying to create a realistic piece of cinema verite. Bonnaud seems to think that even movie fantasies should be subject to affirmative action.

Taking a cue from their French counterparts, highbrow ...