Foreign Film: "The Dinner Game" (France, 1998, 78 minutes)

Comedies that rely on persons of limited intelligence to generate laughs range from the sublime (the work of Laurel and Hardy) to the questionable (“Dumb and Dumber”). In the case of Francis Veber’s “The Dinner Game,” the laughs are on the allegedly intelligent and cultured Pierre Brochant, and not at the expense of the dimwitted Francois Pignon. Francois is the innocent victim of an elaborate joke Pierre and his friends play, but when Pierre finds himself in need of a true friend, the ever-trusting Francois is his man. In Veber’s skilled hands, this is a comedy with neither malice nor mush, just a witty examination of bourgeois pretensions.—All Movie. Sponsored by the Friends of the Cranford Public Library. Admission is free and all are welcome.