The Dinner Game poster

The Dinner Game (1998)

Film · 1h 20m · In French

Comedy, Foreign (non-English)

A competitive dinner party for "idiots" unravels into a brisk, darkly comic, and absurd catastrophe.

Campy and absurdist, with dry wit. A date-night pick at a brisk pace. Emotionally it carries some weight.

Streaming on Kanopy (free).

The Dinner Game parents guide

There is no US rating to lean on. What we tagged stays mild: no real violence and mild language.

Scare
Not scary
Jump scares
None noted
Gore
No gore
Violence
No real violence
Sex and nudity
None flagged
It has no US rating to check against, so treat our zero as unconfirmed.
Language
Mild
Mild words like damn, hell or crap.

How we rate: an AI reads what is known about each title and tags it 0 to 3; we check the tags against a hand-rated set and correct them by hand when readers tell us. Estimates, not a scene-by-scene review. Spot a mistake? Tell us.

What is The Dinner Game about?

For Pierre Brochant and his friends, Wednesday is “Idiots' Day”. The idea is simple: each person has to bring along an idiot. The one who brings the most spectacular idiot wins the prize. Tonight, Brochant is ecstatic. He has found a gem. The ultimate idiot, “A world champion idiot!”. What Brochant doesn’t know is that Pignon is a real jinx, a past master in the art of bringing on catastrophes...

Does it have a happy ending? (spoiler-safe)

Bittersweet. It earns its ending, but not everyone gets what they want.

Cast and crew

Directed byFrancis Veber
StarringJacques Villeret, Thierry Lhermitte, Francis Huster, Daniel Prévost, Alexandra Vandernoot, Catherine Frot

More like The Dinner Game

The Dinner Game is on our Under 90 minutes, French, 1990s and Comedy on Kanopy lists.

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Uses the TMDB API; not endorsed or certified by TMDB. Intensity, content, tone and pace tags are CouchRot's own.