“The film begins in an airport hall as a group of American tourists arrive to see Paris. Behind his cameras, Jacques Tati watches these innocents during their 36 hours in the city, with as humorous and affectionate an eye as does Monsieur Hulot on the screen. He sees them become entangled in a continual uproar of jargon, sales talk, music - and inefficiency, a state of affairs all too clearly manifest in the France of 1968. Hulot seems at a loss when confronted with the monstrous buildings and bureaucratic paraphernalia. He is constantly hailed by friends he has not seen for years or who he cannot remember, and his timid attempts at explaining himself are drowned by noise or by the louder conversations of neighbours.
“The rhythmical structure of Playtime is extraordinary.... Sounds carry infinite weight, like the squeak of a chair as Hulot sits down tentatively in the waiting room, or the hammering footsteps of a petty official as he approaches the camera from a distance. Through the whole film peeps Tati's tolerance of human quirks....” --Peter Cowie