Francis Veber has been writing and directing comedies in his native
France for 30 years now, and he has honed his practice fine. Although his
most famous work has been remade badly by Hollywood, often with Veber's
help (such duds include The Toy, My Father the Hero, and
Three Fugitives), his La Cage Aux Folles did survive the
translation into The Birdcage, a picture that nicely framed Veber's
aesthetic for American audiences. He loves to introduce the uptight elite
either to a vulgar clod or to an outrageous outsider, and then to hear what
they talk about for the next hour and a half.
For Veber's latest, The Dinner Game, he's distilled the action
mostly to one room and two characters, which may seem a cheat given the
film's more expansive premise. The film stars Thierry Lhermitte as Pierre,
a self-centered young publishing executive who joins in a weekly joke with
his equally arrogant friends--they each bring a boorish guest to a dinner
party and spend the evening subtly mocking their "idiots." From the moment
this idea is introduced, we in the audience look forward to seeing it play
out, to seeing the dullards and their caddish hosts endure each others'
company in an evening of escalating comic tension. But we never get to the
party. Sorry, folks. Maybe in the sequel (or the upcoming American
remake).
Instead, we spend the film in Pierre's apartment, where he's laid up
with a wrenched back. Adding insult to his injury, Pierre's wife has just
left him, and before he can call off his dinner engagement, his idiot
arrives, in the form of schlubby tax inspector and matchstick model-making
enthusiast Fran¨ois (played by Jacques Villeret). The well-meaning Fran¨ois
attempts to help Pierre save his marriage by making some phone calls on his
behalf, but the dim-witted taxman keeps making mistakes that get his aching
host into further trouble.
There are some ideological and artistic problems with The Dinner
Game that are hard to shake. Besides the abbreviated scope of the
scenario, Veber is also far from fearless when it comes to skewering his
characters. His Pierre is not quite mean enough; his Fran¨ois is not quite
doltish enough. We know Veber wants us to sympathize with the callously
treated idiots, but he also wants us to laugh at them, so he withholds some
much-needed demonization of their obnoxious sponsors. And Veber rivals
American filmmaker John Hughes in the hypocritical way he mocks a slob for
90 minutes and then tries to reveal said slob as a paragon of "common man"
virtue in the last 10.
Luckily, as Hughes had John Candy to partially justify his excesses,
Veber has Villeret, whose sleepy eyes and eager smile are as ingratiating
as the precise timing of his dialogue delivery. Confident in his own
inherent humanity, Villeret is unafraid to get laughs by playing the idiot
he's supposed to be--when his Fran¨ois starts improvising lies on Pierre's
behalf, the delight he shows in his own ill-conceived cleverness is
genuinely hilarious.
As usual, a good chuckle goes a long way toward forgiving a film's
flaws. For all the tentativeness of its social commentary, The Dinner
Game benefits from Veber's experience with pacing and shooting. So many
American comedies are so muddy and sloppily edited, it's almost a relief to
sit back and enjoy the Frenchman's tastefulness and skill in executing the
kind of minor slice-of-life that his country does so well. Even if he
doesn't invite enough idiots, Veber still throws a nice party.
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