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Review: If "American Pie" isn't your particular dish of comedy, why not try something with a little more Continental flavor?

French filmmaker Francis Veber (he co-wrote "La Cage Aux Folles") serves up comic frustration au jus in "The Dinner Game" ("Le Diner de Cons").

The second-biggest hit in France after "Titanic" (use this space to fill in your own Jerry Lewis crack), "Dinner Game" has a yummy premise. Every Wednesday, a bunch of snotty Paris yuppies stages a dinner party. The challenge? Each diner is expected to bring a guest: a grade-A idiot whose unwitting foolishness provides the evening's entertainment. The winner is whoever hooks the biggest dope.

Pierre Brochant (Thierry Lhermitte), a smugly successful publisher, thinks he has a sure thing with his latest "prize." He's Pignon (Jacques Villeret), a rotund, pathetically eager-to-please government employee whose hobby is building scale replicas of famous monuments. Out of matchsticks. His pride and joy is his Eiffel Tower, which took 346,422 sticks.

Fate, however, intervenes when Brochant injures his back. Forced to miss the dinner, he becomes both host and hostage to Pignon, who, while trying to be helpful, manages to wreck his life in a matter of hours.

"Dinner Game" isn't what you'd call sophisticated fare. But its silliness is infectuous and virtually unstoppable as disaster builds on disaster. The piece's theatrical origins are clear in the way virtually all the action takes place in Brochant's sumptuous apartment. Pignon may get out the door, but he never gets very far. And all the other characters — from Brochant's estranged wife to a sharp-eyed tax auditor — find excuses to drop by. But the farce never feels forced. The cast's timing is just too good.

Ultimately, "Dinner Game" is nothing more than a diversion. But on its own terms, it's an idiot's delight. And best see it now, in its original version. Word is that Hollywood has already bought the rights for an English-language remake. Worse word is that they're thinking Robin Williams.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

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