The Dinner Game (1999) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/ Member: Online Film Critics Society
**1/2 out of four
"Hello, I'm your husband's idiot."
Starring Jacques Villeret, Thierry Lhermitte, Brochant Francis Huster, Daniel Prévost. Rated PG-13.
The Dinner Game, a good-natured, old-fashioned French farce by Francis Veber (La Cage aux Folles) isn't particularly good, but to the filmmakers' credit it could not have been much better. It's the kind of movie in which the plot itself is a restriction, preventing it from being more than a disappointingly broad, mildly entertaining situation comedy. One of cinema's biggest problems is movies that fail to realize the potential of their respective storylines; here's one that milks the most out of its storyline but still turns out to be merely serviceable.
The cockeyed premise behind this fairly futile attempt is this: a group of rich, snobby Frenchmen get together every week for a very special dinner. To this dinner each must bring a very special guest. This guest must be the biggest, most boring idiot they can find. They make the poor saps humiliate themselves by simply talking, and whoever brings the biggest idiot is the winner.
Publisher Pierre Bronchant (Thierry Lhermitte) is lacking an idiot just a couple of days before the dinner. One of his pals, however, pulls him out of potential hot water and finds him a dilly of a buffoon: François Pignon, a lowly accountant who makes miniature models of famous structures out of matchsticks. Bronchant is sure he has a winner on his hands so he invites Pignon to his house for a drink and then to his dinner under the guise that his publisher friends are interested in doing a book on his models.
Unexpectedly, Bronchant hurts his back and can't go to the dinner. He is unable to prevent Pignon from coming over to his house anyway. So it is that Bronchant winds up at his idiot's mercy: nearly immobilized and with his wife leaving him (oh, I'm sorry, did I forget to mention that?), he has nothing to do but reluctantly accept Pignon's help. The results are not pretty.
The Dinner Game plays out with all the wacky spontaneity of a Seinfeld episode; unfortunately it also has the same sitcom humor and feel. Much of the film is undeniably funny, but unfortunately Veber has yet to learn the meaning of the word "subtlety". The movie may be amusing but it's also fairly dumb and frivolously hollow; the jokes fly at you but as they register in your head you can think of only the fact that you could turn on the tv and see undeniably funnier stuff.
The performances are certainly good: veteran actor Jacques Villeret is delightful as the oddly charming buffoon and Thierry Lhermitte's Bronchant is duly contemptable. Indeed, the actors often make The Dinner Game funnier than it perhaps should be; a classic example of performers not only rising above their material but bringing it up a notch too.
The Dinner Game is a well-intentioned movie, making sure that it gets across its message: don't judge a book by its cover. Unfortunately by the end of the movie Veber still hasn't learned the meaning of the word "subtlety" and the movie's theme winds up being conveyed in an annoyingly outright manner. Instead of making it a constant undercurrent, he just comes out and tells us what he wants us to perceive from his movie.
If nothing else, The Dinner Game is a good try; an engaging and amusing -- although not intelligent or subtle -- farce that entertains even as its flaws are clear as day. I can't come right out and recommend this movie but it isn't a bad way to spend an evening, especially if the alternative selections don't appeal to you. ©1999 Eugene Novikov‰
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