With modern comedy seemingly locked into either hidden-camera humiliations or SNL grads mugging their way through shapeless material, there's much to be said for a filmmaker who understands that, when it comes to farce, the plot's the thing. Cue Francis Veber (La Cage aux Folles, The Closet), who's been covering the spit-take and pratfall beat for nearly 40 years. Veber's latest film, The Valet, is, it must be said, not one of the director's tightest contraptions, with an inert protagonist and an ending that just sort of... ends. Still, even if the belly laughs aren't there, there's just something about the old-fashioned construction that makes you grin.
Moroccan comedian Gad Elmaleh becomes the latest to portray Veber's recurring Everyman schlub, François Pignon, reincarnated this time as a parking attendant who gets caught in the middle of a photographed clinch between a supermodel and her rich married fling (Daniel Auteuil, who played another Pignon in Veber's superior The Dinner Game). Desperate to avoid his wife's wrath, the billionaire presents the valet with a propositionâlive with the model for a month and receive enough cash to keep his virginal girlfriend's bookstore afloat. Things play out from there in pretty much the way you'd expect.
Veber's pushing 70 now, and this is unquestionably a movie made by an old man, who regards paparazzi, video games, and cell phones with the same unrestrained loathing. (The upcoming remake by the Farrelly Brothers will presumably update the Candid Camera references to something currently airing on Fox.) As musty as it often is, though, it's also strangely comforting to revisit a world where the sight of a beautiful woman walking down the street can still cause a gaping waiter to set a customer's hair on fire. Hey, you kids, get off my lawn.
