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The Dinner Game

Play trailer Poster for The Dinner Game PG-13 Released Jun 25, 1998 1h 20m Comedy Play Trailer Watchlist
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74% Tomatometer 46 Reviews 90% Popcornmeter 10,000+ Ratings
Wealthy Frenchmen hold a weekly contest to see who can invite the biggest idiot to their dinner parties.
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The Dinner Game

Critics Reviews

View All (46) Critics Reviews
Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly Rated: B Sep 7, 2011 Full Review Lisa Nesselson Variety Weaves a simple premise into comedy gold. Jan 14, 2008 Full Review Andrea C. Basora Newsweek Despite the stagey set-up (it was originally conceived as a play and it shows), the film manages to maintain its humor and energy until the final scene in which Veber suddenly casts aside his delightful meanspiritedness and gets soft-hearted and preachy. Jan 14, 2008 Full Review Charles Gordon Maclean's Magazine One of the best of the crop of new movies, The Dinner Game, is a telling assault on the ironic sensibility. Oct 21, 2019 Full Review Maitland McDonagh TV Guide Scared of sophisticated French cinema? This coarse comedy will restore your confidence. Rated: 1/4 Jan 14, 2008 Full Review Doris Toumarkine Film Journal International Its very tautness and on-the-money performances from the odd-coupled Jacques Villeret and Thierry Lhermitte help make this a highly amusing and old-fashioned big-screen entertainment. Jan 16, 2007 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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Nathalie C To be watch in French obviously. I watch it so many times and still enjoy it. A classic. Merci 🙏 Rated 5 out of 5 stars 10/26/22 Full Review dan m The original French version of "Dinner with Schmucks", which I only vaguely remember at this point. I feel like this has got to be the funnier(and better) of the two, even though like I said I don't really remember the 2010 movie. This was quite a hoot, maybe not a total LOL all the way thru, but still very amusing. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review david l The Dinner Game can get repetitive, it's very familiar in its central relationship, and overall it felt too stagey and limited in scope, but when it worked, it worked with a pretty solid humor, and in particular the main two characters are quite well developed. Their dynamic is very memorable and a lot of fun. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member It was decent I guess. Maréne is a terrible actor and the main guy forgets his back hurts. The idiot is good, but the rest is decent or below. The sets are nothing special, it looks pretty low budget. It often fails while trying to be funny. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/03/23 Full Review Audience Member I shouldn’t like The Dinner Game, it goes against all logic. This is the French original that spun off into Dinner for Schmucks, a movie I greatly disliked because it was so mean-spirited and tortured the main character mercilessly, which are things I find hard to handle. Not only that, but this movie doesn’t include the actual dinner party, which is the one scene I actually liked from Dinner for Schmucks. So, why in the world was I laughing so much at this version? First of all, unlike Paul Rudd who plays a guy who is somewhat likable, Thierry Lhermitte’s character is a complete jerk. He’s the kind of person you want to see tortured for his actions. In fact, there is not much redemption for his character in the film, so I didn’t mind when the agony kept coming. Also, there’s a sweet innocence to Jacques Villeret that I didn’t feel as much from Steve Carell. Finally, the presence of a friend in Francis Huster, who was visibly laughing as things continued to get worse, kind of gave me permission to find the humor in things as well. The Dinner Game is a simple film that takes place almost entirely in one room. I appreciate the charm of that, and can see this would work brilliantly as a stage production with the right cast. The magic of the film comes from the fact that Jacques Villeret’s performance as the idiot is just grounded enough that it feels believable. The situations he stumbles into often feel like the kind of mistakes someone could make if they were a bit clumsy or easily distracted. He’s not so over-the-top insane that it makes the whole film feel like a strange fantasy world, but he’s just odd enough that you wonder if anyone could be that scatterbrained. I was also impressed how much humor they were able to create in this film almost exclusively with phone conversations. There is only a smattering of physical comedy, and the rest of the magic is created through just words from both sides of a telephone call. It’s not one of the greatest comedies I’ve ever seen, but I was pleasantly surprised by The Dinner Game. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/24/20 Full Review Audience Member The farcical screenplay is far from the definition of finesse, as it moves in a rather familiar, generic area of comedy and wears its symbolisms on its forehead. Still, it remains pretty enjoyable thanks to the convincing acting and the small duration. Yet the ending is that sort of unbelievably clichéd, shout-at-the-screen-inducing resolution that you'd expect would only appear on the Hollywood remake as a sacrilege to the more sophisticated French original. Well... sophisticated my ass. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review Read all reviews
The Dinner Game

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Cast & Crew

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Movie Info

Synopsis Wealthy Frenchmen hold a weekly contest to see who can invite the biggest idiot to their dinner parties.
Director
Francis Veber
Producer
Alain Poiré
Screenwriter
Francis Veber
Distributor
Lions Gate Entertainment
Production Co
Gaumont, TF1 Films Production
Rating
PG-13
Genre
Comedy
Original Language
French (France)
Release Date (Theaters)
Jun 25, 1998, Original
Release Date (Streaming)
Sep 20, 2018
Box Office (Gross USA)
$4.1M
Runtime
1h 20m
Sound Mix
Surround
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