Tejas Nair I watched this after watching two of its remakes & God, was I bored? No. Not a bit. There's always gladness watching the original & after this, I wonder I could watch the play.Talking about two amazing characters who don't know each other, the plot revolves around how one of them invites the other to one of his parties where he'd deliberately make fun of him along with his friends. Classic story riddled with jokes, humorous dialogs & performance. I am stunned by one accident sequence as it was so original, I have never seen so authenticity in any accident sequence. Bravo to the makers!There are many scenes which you will be wanting to see again & again for the degree of slapstick involved is astronomical. Amazing! This is one reason, I love French cinema.BOTTOM LINE: Highly recommended & it'd be better if you watch it first before relishing the remakes. 9.2 out of 10!Profanity/Sex/Mouth-Kiss: No | Vulgarity: Mild | Smoking: No | Alcohol/Drugs: Mild | Porn/Violence/Gore: No

lepoisson-1 Francis Veber wrote and directed La Doublure, which was cute, creative, light and fun, so we figured Veber's Le dîner de cons would be another winner. What a disappointment! The premise had promise. The acting was excellent. The characters worked. The movie flowed somewhat logically, and the ending was great...yet something was terribly wrong. Instead of laughing out loud as we did during La Doublure, we cringed as one stupid thing after another happened to people we didn't like or care about. It wasn't funny: it was embarrassingly dumb. In La Doublure, the main character may have been down and out, but he was a genuinely nice person, and we wanted him to succeed; here, everyone was either rotten or downright dumb. We lost interest in everyone, and thus lost interest in the movie.

davidallenxyz Happened to see this on TV one evening recently by accident.Have to say that it is one of the best films I have seen for a very long time.Brilliantly judged comedy of manners and class that will appeal to almost anyone with a human heart and mind. Sharp witted and wise without becoming sentimental.Only criticism would be a certain staginess (I assume it was originally a play), but the humour more than makes up for that.Don't let the subtitles put you off.Heartily recommended.

Camera Obscura THE DINNER GAME (Francis Veber - France 1998).It's always a joy to see an old-fashioned but very funny farce. Pierre Brochant is a smug Parisian riche who has the habit of playing a game with his wealthy upper-class friends to see who can bring the biggest idiot to a dinner party. When an acquaintance has found him a candidate, monsieur François Pignon - the biggest idiot of all time - he gets more than he bargained for when Pignon unwittingly bulldozes through Pierre's life and everything comes crashing down upon him.This French comedy by Francis Veber, a huge hit in France, was based on his own 1992 stage play. It's a bit in the old screwball mode of classic Hollywood, think DINNER AT EIGHT (1932), with some echos of Neil Simon and Billy Wilder. If you like those, you will no doubt have a good time watching this comic farce. But as far as comedies of errors are concerned, the French have a long tradition of their own.Apart from a few outdoor scenes in the beginning, the film is set entirely in one Parisian living room with just a few actors. It's nothing more than a filmed play, quite static, but the cast consists exclusively of comedy pros. Thierry Lhermitte as the wealthy Parisian snob and Jacques Villeret as the grand idiot, form a wonderful team. Now, I'm gonna find me an idiot.Camera Obscura --- 8/10