GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 4/19/07)

Francis Veber is France's most successful cinematic farceur in part because he's also the most reliable. Not only does he concoct surefire comedic premises that are simultaneously diabolically clever and bone-headedly obvious, he constructs them around a hapless yet appealing everyman you can't help (so the idea goes) but root for. Veber has little fear of being called unoriginal. How little — well, he almost always gives his hapless everyman the exact same name, regardless of his age and circumstance. Said name being Francois Pignon.

The Valet's Pignon is a young parking valet (Elmaleh) at a fancy restaurant by the Eiffel Tower. He yearns to marry coy girlfriend Ledoyen, who's trying to make a go of her newly opened bookshop. One day, Elmaleh is photographed in the vicinity of a spat between piggish, and very married, business tycoon Auteuil (who embodied a different Pignon in Veber's 2001's The Closet) and supermodel Taglioni. Attempting to get the paparazzi off his trail, Auteuil convinces supermodel to pretend to be Elmaleh's lover and move in (temporarily) with him. What's in it for Elmaleh? The money Ledoyen needs for the bookshop. As for Auteuil's crafty wife Scott Thomas, she knows something's up, but not quite what. These players, plus various peripheral ones — Elmaleh's quizzical parents, his horny, incredulous ex-roommate — energetically enact a series of cozy comic misunderstandings.

The Valet is cute, funny, and, of paramount importance to some, short. Its punchline, imagining the worst that could happen to Auteuil's slimy exec, is weak and kind of dumb, but the rest of the film is genial, appealing, and brisk. Its American rights have been bought by the Farrelly Brothers; whatever they do with it, it's a sure thing they're going to start by pumping it up. Too bad. Another reason Veber is France's most successful cinematic farceur is that he knows when to leave well enough alone.

— Glenn Kenny