France embraces commercial film?

So Allie sent me this link, which is titled "The Rise of Le Blockbuster" on the IMDB hit list (perhaps our favorite source of news even though we actually refer to their gossip page as "the news"). At any rate, I think it has caused me to have an identity crisis regarding my love of French cinema. I rather prefer the quaint, quirky, brief, no-thrills films they tend to produce. Okay, so I've long disliked French thrillers (which don't thrill), especially if marked by Claude Chabrol (how can you be held in suspense if you know who the bad guy is and why s/he's doing what s/he is through the entire film?). But I digress...

The French blockbusters this article refers to should not be confused with the junk blockbusters we never see like the Taxi series (but unfortunately, like so many French films--good or bad--was remade for American audiences). Amelie is somehow seen as the catalyst for this new foray into commercialism. I like Amelie--hell, we know I really liked the haircut since I had it for quite awhile--but I do think it's overrated. I actually prefer A Very Long Engagement despite the gore we know I can't take. But that movie--the most expensive in French film history, I believe--was legally declared not French enough to compete at Cannes and the like for taking money from American Warner Independent Pictures. As if Americans could make a film with that attitude toward World War I! But yet The Chorus, a recent blockbuster made on a small budget because it really is a small film, is so very American right down to its structure with needless framing from the present day and a happy ending that really is an ending that doesn't leave you wondering what happened after "the story" ends.

So what am I supposed to make of all this? I don't know, but hopefully this doesn't push out the "market" for those French films I think are so quintessentially French. And yes, I love Francis Veber films.