The Dinner Game

The Dinner Game (Le Dîner de cons, 1998) is a French comedy directed by Francis Veber — watch online on iFILM. Every Wednesday, a circle of wealthy Parisian friends plays a cruel game: each brings along the most oblivious fool he can find, and the group spends the evening laughing at him.

Publisher Pierre Brochant thinks he has found the ultimate specimen — a mild-mannered tax inspector named François Pignon who spends his evenings building miniature Eiffel Towers from matchsticks. The plan falls apart when a golf injury pins Brochant to his armchair on the very night of the dinner. Pignon arrives at his apartment to help, and the chaos that follows is entirely of Brochant's own making. Jacques Villeret and Thierry Lhermitte lock into a perfectly calibrated double act, one hopelessly well-meaning, the other increasingly desperate.

Veber adapted his own long-running stage play, and the one-room format works even better on screen — the jokes accelerate with nowhere to hide. It is a textbook comedy of comeuppance that stays funny precisely because Pignon never once realises he is the punchline. Watch The Dinner Game (1998) online on iFILM.