TV Guide: Francis Veber

Listing: Three Fugitives

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Sun Oct 19 02:00 PM CMT

Video: Buddy Buddy

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:21:09 +0000

As if in some way Billy Wilder sensed that Buddy Buddy would ultimately turn out to be his final feature film, Wilder lets loose scatter-shot stingers at a wide range of pop-culture targets -- from sex clinics, to 60 Minutes, to movie references, to disco, to Betamax video recorders. Based on Francis Veber and Edouard Molinaro's L'emmerdeur (known in the United States as A Pain in the A. . .), Buddy Buddy concerns the unlikely pairing of a gruff hitman and a suicidal klutz. Walter Matthau plays a professional killer going by the name of Trabucco, who is on his way to rub out gangster Rudy Disco Gambola (Fil Formicola), set to testify against the mob. As Trabucco heads off to a hotel across the street from the courthouse where he plans to set his hit, he runs into the depressed Victor Clooney (Jack Lemmon), who laments the fact that his wife has left him for the head of a weird Californian sex clinic. Trabucco keeps walking and sets up his rifle in a hotel room. He is disturbed by Victor trying to hang himself

Video: Valet, The

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 01:03:35 +0000

French farce master Francis Veber (The Dinner Game) combines slapstick laughs with rapid-fire dialogue as he tells the tale of a Parisian valet unwittingly drawn into the affairs of a wealthy industrialist. Fran ois Pignon (Gad Elmaleh) is a simple valet employed by a posh Paris restaurant. Blissfully unaware of the paparazzi stalking powerful businessman Pierre Levasseur (Daniel Auteuil) and his stunning mistress, Elena (Alice Taglioni), the innocent passerby Fran ois wanders haphazardly into the frame. Realizing that the common man in the photograph may be Levasseur's only hope of avoiding a nasty divorce from his wife, Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas), Pierre's quick-thinking lawyer (Richard Berry) arranges for Fran ois to live with Elena in order to mislead the tabloids. Having just been dumped by childhood sweetheart Emilie (Virginie Ledoyen), Fran ois accepts the proposal, in the hopes he can win her back through jealousy. But Pierre's jealousy flares, Elena grows frustrated with her new digs, and C

Video: Dinner Game, The

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:52:32 +0000

Francis Veber wrote and directed this film adaptation (with animated opening credits) of his own play, Le diner de cons, about a competition among a group of friends to see who can find the stupidest person to bring to dinner (as indicated by the original French title, since con means someone who's a total dumbbell). The dinners are held each Wednesday night, and French publisher Pierre Brochant (Thierry Lhermitte) has found a world class nincompoop -- Finance Ministry accountant Francois Pignon (Jacques Villeret) who uses matchsticks to build small-scale replicas of monuments. Things quickly go awry after Pierre wrenches his back at golf. He nevertheless makes an effort to attend the dinner with his prize dunce. Francois arrives at Pierre's luxury apartment, but Pierre is in such pain they never exit the apartment for the dinner. Instead, Pierre is trapped in a situation where Francois' stupidity turns his life into a comic hell. In 1993, Villeret created the role of the dimwit onstage during 600 performance

Video: Pure Luck

Video Detective — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:31:13 +0000

This wacky buddy comedy was the fifth in a series of Hollywood remakes of films by French director Francis Veber, none of which were box office successes. Sheila Kelley is Valerie Highsmith, an heiress who, despite her family's wealth, suffers from horribly bad luck. On a vacation to Mexico, she takes a fall, causing amnesia, then is mugged and kidnapped for ransom. When her father (Sam Wanamaker) becomes frustrated with the failed attempts of a detective, Ray Campanella (Danny Glover) to find his daughter, he teams a very reluctant Ray with Eugene Proctor (Martin Short), an accountant whose bumbling bad luck is even worse than Valerie's. The theory is that perhaps two such incredibly unlucky people will act like magnets, with Eugene leading Ray to Valerie's location. Although Ray finds Eugene irritating, the unlikely partners eventually begin making surprising progress in the case, despite Eugene's never-ending screw-ups and pratfalls. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide.

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