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FILM: Of Witches and Muses - Review
National Review, Sept 13, 1999 by John Simon
If you want to see how funny a movie can get, catch The Dinner Game, as Le Diner de cons (The Dinner of Jerks) has been unsatisfactorily Englished. Written and directed by Francis Veber of La Cage aux folles fame, this concerns a weekly dinner given by pranksters, to which each guest must bring along a jerk dumb enough not even to know when he is mocked. At the bit of a dinner we see, an expert in boomerangs who gets himself knocked out by them has the others laughing inwardly as he delivers a paean to the boomerang.
The publisher Brochant intends to squire Pignon, a low-level clerk at the Ministry of Finance who reproduces famous monuments with matchsticks and will regale you with the exact number of matches and tubes of glue it takes to build them. Brochant has invited Pignon to a pre-dinner drink at his apartment, but having just wrenched his back, can't go. Pignon stays on to be helpful, especially after a phone message from Christine Brochant announces that she is leaving her husband. Pignon's wife left with a friend of his two years ago, which makes Pignon especially sympathetic.
But beware of Pignon's helpfulness! Whatever he tries to do for Brochant lands the publisher in a worse mess, from little clumsinesses to catastrophic whoppers. When Brochant's mistress is to be gotten rid of, it is Pignon who opens the door. Not knowing that the woman he sees is not the mistress at all, but Christine, who has changed her mind, he tells her to be temporarily satisfied with the usual four to five visits a week. No wonder she departs with even firmer resolve this time.
It is hard to convey the humor of farce out of context and in cold print. What matters most is that Jacques Villeret, as Pignon, Thierry Lhermitte as Brochant, and Francis Huster as a friend all have split- second timing and knockout facial expressions. Best of all may be Daniel Prevost, as a smug tax collector named Cheval, who horses around with exquisite dignity. See it!
COPYRIGHT 1999 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
