Film / The Dinner Game

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The Dinner Game (French: Le dîner de cons - Dinner for Fools) is a 1998 French comedy/farce directed and written by Francis Veber, adapted from his own 1993 stage play. The song "Le temps ne fait rien à l'affaire" by Georges Brassens was used for the opening credits.

Every Wednesday, French editor Pierre Brochant (Thierry Lhermitte) and some of his friends organize a very special dinner: a "dîner de cons" (Literally: "Dinner of shmucks"), where whoever brings the dumbest guest wins.

Desperate to find a suitable candidate for the week, Brochant invites a friend's recommendation: François Pignon (Jacques Villeret), a taxman who builds models out of matchsticks and seems like "a real winner". Unfortunately, Brochant hadn't exactly counted on the fact that on the evening of the dinner, he'd have thrown his back playing golf, his wife would have left him and he'd be stuck at home, alone with Pignon, who's a goofball extraordinaire...

Le dîner de cons (The Dinner Game) was a financial and critical success in France and in the United Kingdom. The movie won Best Scenario, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor at the Césars Awards.

It was remade in America, as Dinner for Schmucks.

Examples

• Actually Pretty Funny:
  • Juste Leblanc's reaction to Pignon's actions and Brochant's misfortunes with him, and the irony of Brochant spending the night with Pignon.
  • Both he and Brochant later laugh during Cheval's call to his wife when he's telling her to get dressed. Even Pignon who visibly feels compassion for Cheval due to his history with his wife leaving him, cannot help but laugh a bit at it.
  • Pignon also laughs and falls on the sofa when Cheval jokingly tells him that he isn't Pascal Meneaux's type, as he prefers them with more chest and less leg hair.
  • Brochant himself laughs at Pignon's joke about his ditzier colleague Jean-Patrice Benjamin who's nicknamed "Ducon".
• Always Someone Better: As dumb and naive Pignon can be, he has an apparently even more stupid colleague named Jean-Patrice Benjamin who's nicknamed "Ducon" at the ministry, with him only talking about sailboard. Brochant is visibly excited when learning about him, and asks his contact details to Pignon, clearly wanting to invite him to a next dinner.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Pignon calls Leblanc as a Belgian film producer to get informations on Brochant's wife. He ends up hanging up without any information on the wife - but he sure is going to get the movie rights for cheap.
• Best Served Cold: Cheval makes it clear to Meneaux that he will pay for having slept with his wife during their phone call, telling him that they are restarting Meneaux's tax audit from the beginning. Meneaux himself seems to have slept with Cheval's wife in part as revenge for all the troubles Cheval has caused him for months.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Brochant pretends to be nice and interested in Pignon's matchsticks models, even though he just invited Pignon to mock and make fun of him alongside his friends behind his back. The way he talks to Pignon is also very condescending with thinly veiled contempt, though Pignon is too naive and trusting to notice it at first.
• Black Comedy: Only lightly.
• The Casanova: Pascal Meneaux has this reputation, so Pierre Brochant is very worried when he thinks that his wife is in his flat. This reputation is justified: he has sex with the wife of his tax inspector, Lucien Cheval.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: When Pignon accidentally takes Cheval to the room where Brochant and Juste hid all the precious items in Brochant's appartment instead of the toilets, Brochant who's been through so much due to Pignon's stupidity and gaffes and of his wife leaving him, only responds in a deadpan tone that he had told Pignon to go room on the left. After Cheval tells him that he will return soon to inspect him, Brochant's reaction is to snarkily remarks that Cheval is quick to recover in a deadpan and jaded way.
• Commonality Connection: When Brochant's wife leaves him a message telling him that she's leaving him, Pignon feels great compassion for him due to having seen his wife leave him for one of his coworkers several years ago. This is the source of Pignon's motivation to help Brochant finds and patch things up with his wife, even after learning the truth about Brochant's personality and of the dinner.
• *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": Brochant hurts his back playing golf, and spends most of the film nursing his back injury. Said injury is what prevents him from taking Pignon to the dinner in the first place.
• Deadpan Snarker: Brochant's reaction when Pignon suggests him to call Leblanc to verify if his wife didn't return to him, snarking about him calling his estranged friend to ask him if the woman he stole from him is back with him.
• Death Glare: Pignon ends his first call with Cheval and slams the phone over a petty football argument, with him chanting "OM sucks" and insulting Cheval, only to stop and decide to call Cheval back when he sees Brochant and Juste Leblanc staring daggers at him.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Brochant is so excited to have found a winner for the dinner game in Pignon and seeing him being even more of a goofball than he expected, that he decides to go to the dinner with Pignon anyway despite his bad back. Predictably it ends with him falling and his back injury getting worse.
  • As Cheval laments after finding out his wife is sleeping with Pascal Meneaux asking his wife to go give documents to Pascal Meneaux, despite knowing what a womanizer Meneaux is, wasn't a good idea at all.
  • As Brochant finds out the hard way, inviting someone working at the Ministry of Finances, while he hasn't declared all of his revenues, turns out to be quite a risky move, as Sorbier pointed out to him at the beginning of the film. While Pignon doesn’t do anything directly against Brochant using his position at the ministry, he ends up inviting his coworker Lucien Cheval, who's the best and most zealous tax inspector at the ministry. By the end of the movie, after seeing all the hidden items of Brochant's home, Cheval promises to come back soon to inspect Brochant.
• The Ditz: Pignon. His colleague Jean-Patrice Benjamin, for whom Pignon's wife left him, is apparently even dumber.
• Dramatic Irony: Pignon takes a woman from Pierre Brochant's flat. Pignon thinks that she is Marlène Sasseur, but the audience knows that she is actually Brochant's wife. Pignon and Brochant will realize this mistake only when the real Marlène Sasseur shows up.
• Driven to Suicide: Marlène threatens to commit suicide if Pignon hangs up the phone.
• Dumb Is Good: Pignon is a well-intentioned idiot with a sometimes heartwarming compassion for people he's barely met, Brochant is a smug intellectual snob who mistreats his closest friends.
• Et Tu, Brute??: Pignon is deeply shaken and hurt when Marlène reveals to him the concept of "le dîner de cons" and realizes why Brochant invited him. He hangs up the phone in silence, staring in the air, and then asks Brochant about the nature of the dinner Brochant invited him to, before asking him directly if he invited him to a "dinner de cons". He agrees with Marlène that Brochant is bad man.
• Face Palm: Brochant does this many times due to Pignon's stupidity, especially during his phone call with Juste Leblanc.
• False Reassurance: When Brochant tells a friend on the phone that Pignon "looks like a real winner" ("Il a une belle tête de vainqueur"). Pignon sees it as proof that he's going to get a book deal. Brochant knows his friends thinks about the dinner.
• The Film of the Play: A faithful adaptation of the 1993 play of the same name. Jacques Villeret takes up again his stage role.
• Friendship Moment: Despite Brochant having stolen his wife, and their two years estrangement, Juste Leblanc has forgiven Brochant by the time of the story and sincerely helps him to find back Christine.
• The Gadfly: Cheval spends a good portion of his time making jokes at Brochant's expanse, trolling him about his wife being possibly with Meneaux, and taunting him about the possibility of Brochant getting controlled. Until he learns about his wife sleeping with Meneaux.
• Here We Go Again!: After the moral of the story and Pignon managing to fix everything in the span of several minutes, he manages to piss off Brochant's wife again by accidentally implying Brochant was feeding him lines.
• Heroic BSoD: Cheval goes through one after finding out his wife was sleeping with Meneaux. Though he snaps out of it when he discovers the room where Brochant has hidden all the items he obtained through money he hasn't reported to the fisc, causing his tax inspector instinct to ressurface, and he promises to return to control Brochant.
• The Hyena: Juste spends a significant part of his screentime either laughing, or trying very hard (and failing) not to laugh, at everything happening to Brochant and later Cheval. Cheval himself is this with him keeping laughing and making jokes at Brochant's expanse, until he learns about his wife cheating on him with Meneaux.
• If Only You Knew: When Brochant asks Pignon if he thinks he can phone Leblanc following his precise instructions, Pignon responds that there are moments where he's under the impression that Brochant takes him as a fool. Brochant's reaction is to stare blankly at him, as if to say the trope verbatim by verbatim.
• Innocently Insensitive: After Brochant's fall and him struggling on the ground in pain, Pignon tells him that he looks like a racehorse who missed an obstacle and that he would be euthanized on a race field. Brochant tells him to leave.
• Intimidating Revenue Service: The reason why the music for Cheval's arrival is the theme from Jaws 1.
• Invited as a Joke: The entire premise of the titular dinner is to invite people to laugh at. Brochant gets a hefty dose of Laser-Guided Karma for his trouble.
• Jerkass: Pierre Brochant is an elitist snob who takes part in dinners that mock people and cheats on his wife, whom he stole from his best friend, treats his mistress with contempt, and treats Pignon in thinly veiled condescending and contemptful way. Even one of his friends knew that he would most certainly invite his father to one of his dinners to make fun of him, if he could.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Brochant suffers an absurd amount of misfortune with him throwing his back right before meeting Pignon, his wife leaving him, him falling on his back and all the gaffes made by Pignon that continue to ruin his life further. Though given what a Jerkass he is, and how he cheats on his wife and treats his mistress, he deserves what's happening to him.
• The Klutz: François Pignon is very clumsy.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Brochant is a jerkass. He stole his friend's wife. He cheated on her. He rejects his mistress. Oh, and his hobby is to make fun of people who are idiots in his opinion. In the end, he has thrown his back, his wife left him, his mistress does not want to meet him again, and his incomes will be controlled by the Ministry of Finance. Subverted, because Pignon decides to help him even if he knows why Brochant invited him and he manages to reconcile Brochant and his wife. Double subverted, because finally Pignon ruins everything.
• Lethal Chef: Brochant, when he tries to turn his expensive wine into lower quality claret. Amusingly, he actually makes it better, before making it worse
• Love Triangle: Brochant stole Leblanc's wife. Pignon's wife was stolen by one of his colleagues.
• Manchild: François Pignon's personality is very childlike with him being an innocent, honest, enthusiastic and naïve man. After realizing his screw-up with Brochant's wife, whom he mistook for Marlène, he tries to hide in the corner, similar to a child who's been caught doing something wrong.
• Meaningful Look: When Brochant asks Pignon if he thinks he can call Leblanc following his precise instructions, Pignon answers that sometimes he's under the impression that Brochant is mistaking him for a fool. Brochant's reaction is to stare blankly at him.
• Mistaken Identity: Pignon mistakes Brochant's wife for Marlène Sasseur when she returns home out of guilt, and thus unknowningly reveals to her that her husband has a mistress, causing her to furiously leave again.
• The Mistress: Marlène Sasseur has been Pierre Brochant's mistress for 2 years. She cares far more for him and their relationship than he does for her, with him treating her like a nymphomaniac annoyance instead of someone he likes.
• Most Writers Are Writers: Christine Brochant, Juste Leblanc, and Marlène Sasseur are all writers. Pierre Brochant is a publisher.
• Nice Guy: Pignon, although in his case it's because Dumb Is Good.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Christine, Brochant's wife returns to the appartment out of remorse for telling Brochant she was leaving him. However Pignon who's been told by Brochant to leave, mistakes her for Marlène and tries to convince her from not come in here, revealing to Christine that her husband is cheating on her and causes her to leave for real. Later at the end of the movie he manages to convince her to reconcile with her husband after a moving phone call, only to ruin it when he answer the phone in Brochant's stead when she calls Brochant, thus apparently proving to her that her husband was insincere and feeding lines to Pignon.
• Obsessively Hyperfixated: Lots of the "dumbs" sought out by Brochant and his friends are people fixated on a single subject or item, such as a man obssessed with boomerangs. Brochant asks one of his friends about his father after learning that he's collecting ladles, and he seeks to meet and invite Jean-Patrice Benjamin, Pignon's even dumber colleague, who's hyperfixated on sailboard.
• Oh, Crap!: Brochant and Juste's reaction whe, Pignon tells them that his colleague Lucien Cheval, whom they have invited to get Pascal Meneaux's address, is a tax inspector, and moreover the best at the Ministry of finances.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Played for laughs. Pignon agreeing to say "Hail OM" (a football club he hates) is enough for Cheval to know that he has an urgent service to ask him.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Pignon's Belgian accent, when Juste asks him a question he doesn't expect.
• Prank Date: Dr Sorbier explains that, when he was a student, he participated in "Dogfight" prank dates. Each participant had to bring the ugliest date. He notes the similarity with the dinner game, which is a non-romantic version of the prank date.
• Punny Name:
  • Juste Leblanc.
  • Also, Marlène Sasseur, which sounds like "Marlène sa soeur" (in French, "Marlene his sister").
• Red-and-White Comedy Poster: See the poster here above.
• The Remake: Dinner for Schmucks
• Rule of Symbolism: The opening scene shows someone throwing a boomerang. The boomerang comes back and hits the thrower in the face. This is a symbol of the fate of Brochant, who intends to make fun of Pignon, but will suffer from the effects of his own joke.
• Serious Business: As much of a joker Cheval is, he takes his job as tax inspector very seriously, with Pignon saying that he would control his own mother if she was suspected of tax evasion. He snaps of his depressed mood, after having learned that his wife slept with Pascal Meneaux and of his need to go the bathroom after drinking Brochant's wine, which was overdosed with vinegar, upon seeing all the items of Brochant's home hidden in a room and promises to come back to control Brochant.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: Brochant and his friends are much wealthier than the people they make fun of. Their different lifestyles are emphasized: for example, Pignon and Cheval enjoy watching a popular sport like soccer, whereas Brochant plays golf.
• Smarter Than You Look: Pignon seems to be really stupid, but in the end he manages to reconcile Brochant and his wife. Subverted, because he ruins everything shortly after.
• Spanner in the Works: Pignon ruins Brochant's plans. First, he falls on Brochant, so Brochant's back still hurts more. Then, he calls Marlène Sasseur instead of Dr Sorbier. And this is just the beginning of the film.
• Tempting Fate: Cheval makes a lot of jokes at Brochant's expanse when they think that Pascal Meneaux is with Christine, Brochant's wife, including about her and Meneaux sleeping together. Guess whose wife Meneaux is really sleeping with?
• Tough Room: Brochant's reaction to Cheval's jokes when he thinks his wife is at Meneaux's.
• Truth in Television: Veber wrote the play when he heard about dinners of the kind being actually organized by Parisian snobs.
• Unintentionally Karmic: The premise of the movie - and indeed its title - is about Brochant using Pignon's stupidity to have a good laugh with his wealthy, snobbish friends. He ends up with his life in ruin, not because Pignon tries to sabotage him, but because Pignon tries to help him.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Main character Brochant takes part in the dinners, stole his best friend's wife, cheated on her for two years, and now refuses to acknowledge his mistress' existence. This is lampshaded in the end by Brochant, who, while trying to commit suicide, moans about how everyone hates him and that even an idiot like Pignon will hate "meanie Brochant".
• Unwanted Assistance: Brochant thinks this of Pignon, after he's managed to fall on him.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: François Pignon and Lucien Cheval often argue with each other, especially since they support different soccer teams. However, they are still friends. Pignon even says that they argue often but they adore each other.
• We Used to Be Friends: Brochant and Juste Leblanc were best friends until Brochant met Christine, who was Leblanc's wife, when she and Leblanc went to present to him the book they wrote together, with Brochant seducing her and causing her to leave Leblanc for him, leaving him and Leblanc estranged for two years. However by the time of the movie Leblanc has forgiven Brochant and decides to help him find Christine back, repairing their friendship.
• Who's on First?:
  • Actually a plot point, when Pignon thinks Marlène is Brochant's sister because her name is Sasseur ("His sister").
  • And later, when he's told Leblanc's name is "Juste Leblanc"; "He doesn't have a first name?"
    "Votre nom à vous c'est François, c'est juste? Eh bien, lui, c'est pareil, c'est Juste."
    Badly translated (juste in French can mean both right and only) ''"Your name, it's François, it's right? Well, him, that's the same, it's Right".
• With Friends Like These...:
  • Brochant is Leblanc's friend, but he stole his wife.
  • Pignon to Brochant, at least in the first part of the movie, when he tries to help him and makes everything worse.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Brochant's reaction several times to Pignon's antics, such as when he ends his phone call with Juste Leblanc without having asked about his wife, staring blankly with his eyes and mouth wide open in astonished disbelief. Also Juste's reaction after the end of Pignon's first call with Cheval, saying Pignon is without competion.